


Hold me still

by bellofthetolppl



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blindness, F/M, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, References to Depression, and clarke freaking out and trying to do something for him, and clarke trying to comfort him, basically once again hurt!bellamy, even though it all hurts, so blind!bellamy, there was an accident and he's blind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-06-23 23:40:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 45,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19711876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellofthetolppl/pseuds/bellofthetolppl
Summary: For the prompt: “I can’t see, what’s happening to me?”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Just a short prompt I filled in. I have a thing for blind!Bellamy and well...you know hurt/comfort in general.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @jasperjoordan

“Clarke” his voice is so panicked it makes her heart clench as she dips her hand in the bowl of hot water “I can’t see. What’s happening?” he reaches his hand in the air before her but it just hangs loosely. She grabs it and puts it back down next to his shaking body.

“Shhh, stay quiet, okay. It will be fine.” she tries to calm him down as she carefully cleans the area around his eyes with a clean cloth and he winces every time she touches his eyelids.

It’s bad. It’s really bad. There was an explosion, a trap set by the grounders and he’d been the idiot leading the party there, first in line, so of course when they stepped on the mines and hell broke lose, he was the first to get hurt. Murphy had a really bad leg wound and Monty’s hands were severely burn but this was...

He took the worst of it. 

“I can’t see.” he repeats and moves his head away from her grip, struggles to get up. 

He’s still, despite it all, fighting, moving, trying to sit up,though whenever he as much as lifts his head up he feels dizzy and his head falls back on the pillow. “Clarke-”

“I need you to stop moving, okay? Please, I have to clean this up” she begs, cupping his face and steadying him. 

He keeps struggling, groaning, he’s afraid, she can sense it and god she’s scared to death too because the minute he was brought in and put on this cot, she knew. 

She still called Jackson to come check him up but one look in his eyes and her suspicions were confirmed. He pushed the warm water and the bandages in her hands, taking her out of her state and squeezing her wrist briefly before taking off to help her mom with the other wounded kids. 

“It’s all dark, I can’t...I don’t-” he is struggling to breathe too and her hand moves down to his bare chest which is covered in bruises from the harsh fall. He was thrown away in the air and her hand had carefully peppered over his bruised ribs and all the cuts covering his body. 

In an ideal situation she’d find the oxygen mask and put it over his face, help him breathe and calm down but his hand shot for her wrist and found it, gripping it so tightly, she didn’t dare move.

“It will be okay” she lies again, she had no idea what to say, how to fix this. She couldn’t and her heart was breaking at the sight of him.”I have to clean this and bandage it up so mom can check it up later, alright? You’ll be fine.”

More lies.

He must’ve caught the sound of her voice, the way her fingers trembled as she unconsciously moved them all over his face, how she was trying to touch the pain away, to let her cold hand provide the much needed comfort on his burning face. 

“I’m blind, aren’t I?” he whispers and she sees a tear roll down his cheek. “Clarke just say it” he begs “I need you to say it.”

“Listen to me” she says seriously digging her fingers in his cheeks for a second. He struggles against her again, he wants to be free, wants out of here, she knows it. 

He has always hated medbay and as much as she is trying to provide comfort, he’s too scared and panicked right now, her words are not sinking in

“Bellamy, goddammit, listen to me-” but he’s not, he’s mumbling something under his nose about it being dark, about Octavia, his mom. 

And she knows that his biggest fear is the dark. That’s why he takes forever to go to sleep at night. That’s why they spend hours after midnight by the fire talking or reading or discussing camp plans or anything really. 

They both can’t stand it-closing their eyes, letting the darkness consume them, feeling the nightmares crawl in before they’re fully even asleep. 

That’s why they slept together too, his arms wrapped around her, pulling her body close-it was the only way they could handle it, knowing that even if the demons come, they would wake up in the arms of the person they feel the most safe around.

And she always thought her nightmares were violent but only after she had started sharing a bed with him, did she realize how bad it was for him too. 

He’d wake up crying, screaming, holding onto her for dear life and he’d so often want to close himself off to her that he’d put on his boots and leave the cabin for hours, bearing his pain on his own until one night she stopped him. 

She wrapped her arms around him and basically forced him to lay back down.

“No” she had said then “You don’t get to hide. Not from me.” she pulled his head to her chest and rubbed his back until he let it all out, until he had cried his guts out and struggled to breathe, until he calmed down.

So she can not imagine how terrified he is right now when the darkness he’s been trying to escape so badly is now completely consuming him.

Clarke does the only thing she can think of, she climbs on the cot, straddling him with her legs and leans to touch his burning forehead. Their breathes collide and she presses her lips to his, carefully, slowly gently all the while her hands are cupping his face.

When she pulls back, he’s no longer struggling, but he seems a bit calmer as surprised as he is. She never thought their first kiss would be like that but then again she thinks how of course it is like this. It’s their lives. It had to be something fucked up, not something sweet and romantic. They weren’t meant for that.

“I’m blind.” he says again,now slowly letting it sink in. Yes, it would take him weeks, probably months, to truly accept it, but when he opens his eyes now and she sees how red and hazy they are, staring at the ceiling above them, seeing absolutely nothing, she feels like crying too, but she commands herself to be strong for him. 

“Yes, you are” her voice breaks a bit and his hands find her wrists again and squeeze them tightly. 

“I’m scared.”

“Me too.” she admits and leans down to kiss him again. This time his nose, then his cheek, then her head falls on his chest and though she knows how much his entire body must hurt, he pulls her close, wants to keep her there. She tries not to let her weight crush him completely. 

“It’s dark.” he admits and she squeezes her eyes shut, trying not to completely break down with him even though that’s what they usually did-they broke down and got themselves up together. 

She grabs another clean gauze and dips it in the cold water, cleaning more of the dirt away.

“I’m here, okay? You’re not alone.” she promises “Just breathe. In and out, come on.” he complies, let’s her do her job, clean his face, his blind eyes, then she reaches out for some nasty smelling cream and applies it on his burned eyelids and his face before wrapping a bandage around his head and helping him lay down comfortably. 

He quiets down, though he still cries while she’s cleaning him up and she doesn’t know when she started either but only realizes it when one of her own tears falls on his face. 

He reaches for her and she helps him put his hand on her cheek.

“You kissed me.” he announces and she smiles stupidly as she gives him a nod he can only feel now “We always had great timing, didn’t we, princess” she laughs through her tears and puts her hand over his.

“Yes, yes we did.” she wants to tell him everything-that she’s here for him, that she’ll help him through it, that he’ll never be alone, that they’ll stand up again, together, like they always did. But she also knows now is not the time for that, that words will mean nothing in this moment when there’s only pain and fear.

“Could you lean down?” he asks barely above a whisper.

“Why?”

“I want to kiss you too.”

And so she does.


	2. Quiet steps

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Some people on here and tumblr asked me if I would continue this. I did not consider it because when I write one shots, I prefer them to stay as one shots and I will be honest with you, I don't plan to turn this into a big long fic, but that said, I decided to write some more. I don't know where this will take me and if I'll try coming up with more or if I'll leave it here. 
> 
> Please know that this became a lot more angsty than I intended to. I actually wanted it to be sweet and fluffy but then because the black dog, as Bob calls it, is strong now, it turned into this. I would love to hear your thoughts on it!
> 
> You can also find me at @jasperjoordan on tumblr.

“Bellamy-” she calls after him, rushing to get by his side. For a blind man, he was going damn fast. 

“Bellamy!” and she was pissed, that’s for sure. “You promised you’d wait!” she grabs his elbow and stops him. 

He sighs annoyed and tries to keep on going but she stills him. 

It was a bright early spring morning. 

He always choose the time with the least people around because he was still so embarrassed of his condition. 

Abby released him from the hospital only a five days ago and in those five days he had managed to stumble and fall more times that Clarke could count. 

Only yesterday she found him on the floor in their tent, hand pressed to a bleeding forehead because he stumbled and hit his head on the edge of the table. 

The day before that he fell flat on his chest, tripping in a root and bruising his wrist. He already had a number of injuries from the accident, aside from the most obvious one of course, his body was stained with bruises-his ribs, his lower back, even his knee was still swollen and as he trudged forward now, he did so with a limp.

But he was relentless. And stubborn.

And it wasn’t the good stubborn, Clarke thought.

He was trying to move on as fast as he could. He wanted to keep on going as though he wasn’t blind, wasn’t completely useless. 

The first night after she brought him back home to her tent, because there was no way in hell she was leaving him behind and he didn’t oppose the arrangement, especially not after that first kiss they shared which they still haven’t really talked about, he was plagued by nightmares. 

In the morning he bolted outside faster than she could put her pants on and he was thankfully caught by Miller who saw him stumbling before he could further injure himself. 

But no matter how much she begged him to take it slow and listen to her, he just wouldn’t. He needed to get a good sense of his surroundings, use the stick she fashioned for him, try to remember where most of the stuff in the tent were first, then carefully the outside, then the entire camp. 

He was so sad most of the time. 

When he was still in the hospital, somehow his mood was a little bit more cheerful. She came by and talked to him, told him stories, made him eat which he did reluctantly. 

He talked less and sometimes she’d find him asleep on his good side, or more like, pretending to be asleep while wetting the pillow beneath him with his tears. 

Ever since she brought him in with her, he got worse though. 

She didn’t expect he’d accept his condition with the snap of his fingers but she wanted him to at least listen to what she and Abby were saying. 

He was still very weak and fragile. It wasn’t just his eyes, his body was thrown up in the air, it was suffering and weak, every muscle was on fire whenever he took a step. 

She knew, because she could hear the sharp intake of his breath every time he did it. There was still risk of infection too. She cleaned the bandage on his eyes twice a day, the time he was of course, the most restless. 

“I can do it-” he blurted and kept on walking.

“You don’t even know where you’re going.” she stood in front of him, placing her hand on his chest, stopping him gently. 

He huffed annoyed and she was pretty sure that if he didn’t have a bandage and he could still see her, he’d be rolling his eyes right this minute.

“Out.”

“Of camp?”

“Mhm”

“No. Definitely no, Bellamy” she cut him off straight on. 

“Clarke-”

“Bellamy! No!”

“Well it’s a good thing you don’t tell me what to do.” he kept on striding and before she knew it, he was tripping again and she grabbed a hold of his arm last minute. She slid underneath him and took most of his weight as he struggled to breathe.

“See?”

“Oh my god, you have to rub it in, don’t you?” he says through teeth and she smiles, reaching to tuck a loose curl away from his forehead. 

Even when in so much pain he still looked beautiful, his face was a thinner and the grip of his hand on hers wasn’t as strong but it was still her Bellamy. 

“Bell-” she says softly cupping his cheek “Please. I know you want to do everything as before. I know you’re embarrassed and you hate having me around helping you, I know you’re probably sick and tired of me but please, let’s go back to our tent. Let’s have breakfast like normal people for once.”

He sighs and she can feel him give in, letting her take more of his weight. 

“Since when are we like normal people,princess?” he whispers and turns his face towards her, his breath tickling her cheek.

“Since I can make scrambled eggs. That’s a normal thing to do.” she assures pulling him closer to her and carefully helping him turn around, leading them slowly to their tent which was at the edge of their small camp. 

That was another thing she was worried about-it was still early in the spring, soon summer would follow and they had already started planning on building the cabins for the winter, but there was a great chance they might not be able to finish on time and she couldn’t have Bellamy sleeping out in a tent in this condition in the middle of the winter storms.

“I hate to break it to you, but what you’ve prepared yesterday can’t be called scrambled eggs, Clarke.”

“Yeah, yeah, blame it on Miller, he fed the fire too much, I burned them”

“Riiiight.” she likes him like this, trying to smile despite it all. 

God, she admires him so much for his strength. 

She always thought of him as a baby when he was sick and he was. 

Often times when he was in medbay he was whining for feeling bored and alone or having an itch he couldn’t reach on his back, but he was also strong. 

Whenever her mom cleaned his eyes from the dirt and the debris stuck in it and changed the bandage, he’d fist his hands and grit his teeth and he wouldn’t let a sound out. 

He’d let her hold her hand ones but he squeezed so tightly, she yelped and he refused to do so again, afraid he’d break it and hurt her. 

He was vulnerable and strong at the same time. 

“You need to go check on Raven and Monty and see how the generator thing is going.” he mumbles when they duck in their tent and she helps him to the bed, carefully sitting him down. 

He sways a bit even when sitting and she catches his hand.

“I’m fine.”

“I know.” it’s been a constant exchange between the two of them in the past few days. “And I’ll check on them later.”

“And the south wall, there’s a hole in there that needs fixing. You have to make Miller and a few of the kids do it now before a storm catches up with us.”

“Bellamy, you don’t need to worry, okay? I’ve got it.” at that his face falls and he gives her a curt nod and she almost wants to slap herself for saying it. 

This was the last thing he wanted to hear-that he’s incompetent anymore to deal with things. She comes by and sits next to him, putting her hand on his back gently and rubbing it back and forth. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like this.”

“It’s okay, it’s not a lie” he smiles sadly at her and he’s about to lay down on the cot again but she grabs his wrist and keeps him up. 

“No,now we eat.”

“Clarke, I’m not hungry”

That’s another thing that has become a struggle for him-eating. 

When he was in medbay he wouldn’t eat at all at first and it’d take her a moment to figure out why-he literally couldn’t. 

He had tried once at first and he had made a mess of himself, she didn’t even know about it until Jackson came by one evening to pick his full tray. 

He had told her then _“You know he can’t feed himself, right? You should just force him if you want him to get better.”_ and she had wanted to slap herself in the face for not figuring out the most obvious of things.

Then the next morning she had sat down and forced him to finish his soup. He hated being fed. It made him feel so worthless so she’d pick some of the soup with the spoon and then hand it to him and he’d eat it on his own but still…there were days he was so depressed, days where she needed to physically grab his shoulder and roll him over and he’d groan and say he’s in too much pain and be feverish and miserable that she couldn’t make him put a bite in his mouth.

As a result, he lost a lot of weight. And she’d be lying if things were better now.

“I don’t care. You have to or I can’t give you your pain meds and if I don’t, you might get infection and then you’ll end up back in medbay. I doubt you want that?”

He groans.

“Can I just take a second first? Maybe you can go meet with Miller and then I’ll eat.” this was another one of his tactics. 

He’d try to send her off somewhere or pretend to be too tired and needing to rest when he never really admitted to that unless he wanted to get rid of eating. She knew him so well.

“Bellamy if you don’t eat now, I won’t eat either. In fact, I won’t eat all day unless you do.”

He sighs, knowing he won’t win this one and reaches out for her hand. He rarely did it, never admitting he wants help and if he’s being honest, he’s in more need of comfort now than help really but he won’t let himself say it out loud. 

“Okay, but let’s go to the table. I don’t want to eat in bed.” she nods, and hates herself for forgetting once again that he can’t see it so she adds a quiet _“Alright”_ and helps him up.

Even going to the table proves to be strenuous for him, by the time she sits him down, his breathing is labored and his hands are shaking. 

How he thought he was going to go for a walk was beyond her but as much as she wants to scold him for it now she decides against it. 

There were days he could take the banter and he would even joke with her but today was not one of those. 

Today was a hard one. 

She leaves him be for about ten minutes because she needs to go to the mess hall for their rations and by the time she comes back he seems to be dozing off on the chair. When she jolts him back to reality he seems even more cranky than before.

It starts okay, with her picking up the mesh of berries and yogurt and putting it in his hand so he can do the job himself but he makes a mess of himself when for some reason his arm starts shaking even more and he gets so angry he just tosses the bowl aside and bangs his fists in the table scaring the shit out of her.

_**“Dammit!”**_ he curses and keeps banging his fists down _**“Dammit, dammit, dammit!”**_

“Bellamy!” she comes around him and hugs him tight as he keeps on destroying the table, needing so much to break something because he was broken himself. 

Then he crumples down and his anger turns into violent sobbing shakes. He cries and she holds him close, pushing his body to hers as best as she can with the back of the chair between them. 

It’s the first time he truly cried and broke down since the accident and she was waiting for it to come but she never thought how hard it’d be for her to hold her own tears. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.” she whispers in his ear like a mantra while he sobs. 

Her hands find his cheeks and try to wipe them clean but he turns his head away and buries his side in his shoulder.

“No, don’t hide.” finally she leaves his back when she’s sure he won’t keep on hitting and comes to kneel before him, cupping his cheeks with her hands and turning his head to her. 

She feels a strange tingling in her stomach when she doesn’t see his eyes. She’s so used to communicating with him with a simple look that she’s a little blown away by it-his vulnerability, the tears streaming down his face-he knows he shouldn’t be crying, he’d wet the bandages and she’ll need to change them sooner than necessary but she doesn’t care about that right now. 

He needed this-the breakdown. Without it, there was no way to start the path going up. 

“Bellamy, I know you’re frustrated and I know this will take a lot of getting used to.” he tries to look away again but she digs her nails in his cheeks just barely to ground him back before he lost himself again “It may be months, a year even and I know all of this scares you to death, I know you’re embarrassed, I can not even imagine all of the thoughts you have whirling around your head right now” a sob escapes his lips and she pulls his head to her chest.

“But I’m here, okay? I’m here.”

His hands wrap around her back and he pulls himself closer to her chest.

“And that’s the problem, princess.” he whispers and her breath gets stuck in her throat. 

He pulls away from her and moves his head up as if he could look at her like he did before.

“Ever since the accident I have completely consumed your life. You help me get up, put my clothes on, eat, walk, even take a bath! You check my bandages, you worry all the time about me if I as much as cough the wrong way. I don’t-I am grateful don’t get me wrong but” he reaches to cup her cheeks but misses so she takes his hands and puts them on for him. 

His fingers pepper all over her, touch her forehead, flattening the creases there, then they go down to her eyes which she closes while he ghosts over them and he feels the bags under, can imagine the dark circles too, then they move down to her lips, they’re thin and chapped. 

“You’re exhausted.” he concludes and angrily pulls his hands away “And it’s all because of me. I don’t want this life for you.”

“So what do you suggest I do instead” she bites back anger filling her voice too now “I leave you in the woods for the wolves?”

“That’d be one option.”

“Don’t joke, Bellamy!”

“I’m not!” he throws his hands in the air frustrated “Clarke, I-” he reaches for her hand again and because she doesn’t help him this time he fumbles till he finds it, starting from her shoulder and going all the way down to her cold bony fingers.

“I know I’ve never said it but you must know by now how I feel about you.” she swallows hard, softens and sighs. His other hand somehow miraculously finds the back of her neck and pulls her to him. Their foreheads meet. “You do, right?”

“Yes.” she breathes out.

“And do you feel the same way too?”

“I do.” she replies with certainty.

“Well you can’t. Not anymore.” he pulls away and suddenly his hand on her neck feels too cold for her. 

“What are you talking about, Bellamy? I’m not going to just stop caring about you whether you’re blind or not!” she watches him shake his head. 

“Clarke, you have your own life. You’re working in medbay still studying stuff, I know you want to be a real doctor. I also know you want the hundred to be good, safe, to expand the camp, build them cabins. Now that I’m useless, you need to lead them, not hide in a tent and hold my hand because I can’t put my shirt on!” he raises his voice for the first time since he started banging his hands in the table and she stands up, taking a step back from him. 

“That’s not your job!”

“And whose is it, Bellamy? Because as far as I know Octavia hasn’t been home in months and she won’t be coming back and you don’t have-”

“Anyone else, I know. I know I’m alone.”

“Except you’re not!” she yells frustrated “I’m right here! Dammit, Bellamy, why do you have to be so stubborn? Why does it have to be so hard for you to just let someone help you? You’re fucking blind! It’s not just going to go away!”

“DON’T YOU THINK I KNOW THAT!” he stands up now too and he staggers for a second. She reaches to grab his hand but he senses it and pulls away, leaning on the edge of the table instead 

“Don’t you think I know that I’ll never be like before? That I can’t shoot a rifle, go hunting, be a guard, help this damn camp in any way? And that’s not even the worst thing! You want to know what is?” she remains silent her eyes filling with tears from the pain in his voice. He is crying too and he struggles to keep going.

“Bell”

“It’s not being able to see you!” he blurts out before she can say anything else “Knowing I lost it all before we even had the chance to give it a try.” he adds turning his back to her. 

She grabs his shoulder and tries to push him to her but he won’t budge so she just wraps her arms around his stomach and hugs him from behind.

“You’re wrong, you didn’t lose anything. We can still try this, we can take it slow. I know you don’t believe it, Bellamy, but you’re strong-you’ll learn how to do all of the stuff you can’t now yourself. You’ll be useful for this camp, I know it. We can figure it out like we always do, just the two of us, together, okay?”

And for a moment she thinks that he’ll give it up, that he’ll believe her and let her help him and she’s optimistic when he pulls away from her and turns around, takes her hands in his and leans down to kiss her forehead. 

His lips are soft and sweet against her cold skin and she feels a warmth spreading throughout her entire being all the way to her toes. 

“I love you, Clarke” he whispers and his thumb grazes her cheek. She smiles and she’s about to rest her cheek on his chest when he pulls away abruptly “And because I do, I have to do the right thing.” his arms drop back to his side “I’m sorry.”

She wants to stop him when he walks away and leaves the ten but she can’t. For some reason, she just can’t force herself to move. 

She crumbles to her knees, though, and buries her face in her hands, the sobs filling the wrecked old tent she called their home, except she didn’t really have that anymore, did she?

She could hear so clearly her home walking away from her-quietly, slowly, his feet trudging painfully, but still despite it all, stubbornly moving forward, further and further away from her.


	3. I want to tell you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So! I wrote more. I'm sorry to say it's not fluffy or probably what you expect. It's actually more angsty. I'd love to know your thoughts on this! I'm trying to write more but tbh Idk where I'm headed!
> 
> You can find me @jasperjoordan on tumblr!

A day passes. Then two. Then another one. 

She loses sight of him as much as she’s trying to keep tabs on him, he’s avoiding her like the plague. 

She knows he moves back to his old ragged tent with holes in it, with nothing but a bed inside. 

Then with some help from Miller, they get it moved to the edge of camp. The other edge. As far away from her as possible. 

She tries to talk to him but it’s like he knew, he just knew every goddamn time she approached him that it’s her. 

He’d maybe catch her sense-that smell of pines and freshly cut grass and even a bit of sweat that she herself could sense when she went to bed and threw the blanket over her head, hiding from the world and imagining he’s right behind her, his hand on her stomach, pulling her to his chest. 

Since he won’t let her help him, she noticed the delinquents doing so and finds out from Monty that they all sat down and talked about it, decided to keep an eye on him and help out when needed without smothering him and Clarke’s eyes teared up when they told her.

“Give him time, Clarke. He’ll come around. He’s just being stubborn.” Jasper assures her with a pat on her back.

“It’s a lot for him. He lost everything.” Monty adds and hands her a cup of moonshine “He’s not just embarrassed by you, he feels really bad having us around and though he won’t say it, I know he thinks it. And he beats himself up for it when he snaps at us.”

She nods, drowns her cup, then drags herself to her tent but not before throwing one last look in the direction of his tent to find that the light is still on, it’d be like this most of the night. He must be having trouble sleeping, not that a few lighted candles could do anything to soothe his soul-it’s not like he could see them. 

But it hurts. All of it, it hurts like hell, it’s been just a few days but seeing Harper hold his hand when she takes him to medbay for Abby to change his bandage, she feels a pang of jealousy as much as she hates herself for it. 

And when Miller hands him a bowl of stew in the evening by the fire and he barely picks on it, she wishes she could go there and kick his ass. 

Or when Monty is throwing a blanket over his shoulders so he doesn’t freeze to death, she wishes it was her enveloping his big strong figure. 

_She misses him._

She knows she should give him some time, that the needs it and tries to throw herself in work but this must be one of the hardest things she’s ever done. And it’s not just because she worries about him.

It’s because of herself as well. 

She misses having him around, teasing her, annoying her, telling her to remember to do this or that, but mostly, she misses him at night when the nightmares and demons come for her in her sleep and she wakes up crying and looking for his hand, his chest, his embrace.

_And it’s gone._

She’s never been more alone. Not after Mount Weather. Not even in the year she spent in solitary. 

On the fifth day the gates open and Octavia comes in riding Helios.

Clarke’s outside by sheer accident, she was heading to the storage room for more bandages when the younger Blake came in. Their eyes meet and Octavia gives her a nod, but she doesn’t approach her and Clarke stays in her lane, still surprised by her appearance.

Either Bellamy called for her or the delinquents did because they knew he needed her. 

She had left camp a year ago, just when things in Arkadia started settling down and Clarke and Bellamy arranged for peace. It was long overdue. She couldn’t stay here, she didn’t want to and so Indra suggested she and Lincoln go to a Trukri village on the west border where they could be useful guarding the territories and having a peaceful life as well. 

Bellamy had only seen her once since then, on the fall festival in Polis last year and Clarke hadn’t seen him that happy in ages. 

When Octavia left their relationship was strained but not broken. She knew he send her letters and Indra brought news of her but he missed her more than Clarke could ever imagine. The siblings bond was special. 

When he got hurt and was still in medbay she asked him if he wanted her to reach out to Octavia. She knew he gave her a radio in case there was an emergency and she needed him. It had never been used before but Clarke believed this called for action. 

He refused to, though. Said he didn’t want her to worry over him, didn’t want to disrupt her life. He knew she hated coming here, she felt trapped, even had nightmares about being locked under the floor. He couldn’t do this to her. 

So someone must’ve done it for him and if she was correct to assume it was the delinquents, he’d be mad at them for a long time. 

Miller and Monty welcome Octavia and point her to Bellamy’s tent. Clarke stays outside just to observe what’s about to happen and not ten minutes later, she can hear the siblings yell at each other. 

Then they quiet down for a bit, then something inside breaks or falls, Clarke hopes it’s not him and winces at the sound.

“It was your mom’s idea.” Miller’s voice startles her and she gives him a surprised look.

“What?”

“He was getting worse, Clarke.” the boy states and takes of his beanie, fumbling with it nervously like he did only on rare occasions. 

Clarke’s heart fills with gratitude towards Miller-he truly cared about Bellamy. All of them did.

“He lost more weight and he was getting more and more depressed, wouldn’t let me drag him out of bed.” she swallows hard, realizing why she hadn’t seen him up during the day and mostly at night. “Your mom suggested it and Monty and I radioed Octavia last night. She had no idea, she was so pissed off.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” Clarke turns her look back to the tent and shakes her head. None of this would be happening if he would just let her help him.

Or...would it? Could she really prevent it?

“I know you think this is your fault, but it’s not.” Miller keeps going eyeing her carefully “I don’t think any one of us could help him but her. He needs some kick assing and some serious intervention.”

Clarke nods, realizing that as much as she doesn’t want to admit it, Miller did have a point. 

It just really hurts to love someone and not be able to help them. It made her feel so powerless, so weak and she hadn’t felt that way since her dad was floated. 

The tent quiets down after sunset and she doesn’t see the Blakes until noon on the next day. Apparently they left camp earlier and were only now coming back. 

Bellamy was stumbling on his feet, walking behind her, using his stick. He was different-his hair was short, he was clean shaven and he didn’t have a shirt on-they must’ve done laundry because Octavia was holding a basket as she strode forward with determination. 

When Clarke saw him she winced-the bruises on his chest were still present, the bandage his mother had wrapped around his ribs was gone and he was pressing his hand to his side, huffing quietly with every step he took. He seemed exhausted, as if suddenly his entire body was on fire.

Octavia was merciless, though.

“Oh my god, do you ever _STOP_ whining!” 

Clarke strides over to them upon hearing this and cuts Octavia’s way short.

“Slow down, he needs to take a minute.” Bellamy bumps in his sister’s back and almost falls but grabs on her elbow before he can fuck himself up. She notices a few more bruises on his face, fresh, new and some blood coming down his nose-he must’ve fallen this morning. 

“He’s fine.” Octavia cuts her off and grabs onto his wrist pulling him forward. He trips and she pushes him upright.

“Octavia, stop it! Can’t you see that he can’t run after you like a dog.”

“I’m fine,Clarke.”

“Oh so you talk to me now? That’s new.”

“Look,-” Octavia ignores her and lets Bellamy lean on her, his arm thrown over her slim but strong shoulders. “You’re coddling him. All of you. And he doesn’t need that. If he wants to be independent, he has to learn how to do stuff himself. Starting with walking.”

“He’s still hurt!”

“I’m fine.”

“Oh, shut up!” they both bite back at him and he groans pushing away from his sister and gripping his stick. 

“I know he’s hurt but that doesn’t mean he’s the useless banana peel you’re all making him out to be. He followed me to the river all by himself.”

“Octavia, he’s bleeding.” as if on cue, Bellamy’s fingers brush the blood under his nose.

“It’s nothing.” he says and when they both start talking through him he huffs and waves his hand in the air angrily “Cut it off! My head hurts and I’m going home. Feel free to continue your fight without me.”

He starts walking and he doesn’t know it, but he’s heading straight for Clarke. She doesn’t stop him, she doesn’t want to stop him so when he bumps into her and her hands flutter over his chest while his free one grips her arm to steady them both, she inhales his scent and she almost leans into him, searching for his hug, his warm embrace, just him.

For a minute they remain like this, completely consumed by one another and she thinks that this is it-he’ll break and realize he’s being an idiot, he’ll take her hand in his, intertwine his fingers with hers and push her head to his chest.

But instead something falls over him, that same dark cloud that’s been hanging ever since he woke up in medbay and he pulls away from her.

“Sorry.” he utters nervously and turns his head to his sister “O?”

“Go to the left and keep on for another thirty steps.” she guides him and Clarke cocks her eyebrow at her. Octavia shrugs and waits till he’s out of sight before she explains “I made him count the steps he needs to take to the most important places here. The mess hall, the bathroom, his tent, the gate.”

“Smart.” Octavia nods and when she walks pass her, her hand quickly squeezes Clarke’s shoulder but before she can say anything else, the younger Blake is gone, ducking under her brother’s tent, scolding him about something the minute she makes it in.

Clarke closes her eyes and rubs her forehead. She was wrong to think this would be a long ride just for Bellamy. It’d be the hardest one she ever had to take too. 

\-----------------------------------------

Two days later Octavia finds her by the fire. 

She’s the last one still there, the rest of the delinquents had long gone home but since she didn’t feel like coming back to an empty bed and tent, she was prolonging the inevitable, nursing a cup of moonshine in one hand while staring at the burning flames. 

“Hey” Octavia greets her and settles down on the log next to her. 

The delinquents had fashioned these chairs out of the woods that they would’t use for the cabin building which was about to start next week. 

“Is he okay?” Clarke knows it’s stupid and pathetic that this is the first thing she says but Octavia doesn’t seem to mind. She takes it seriously, nods and gives her a light smile. 

“Just put him to bed. We got a long road ahead of us tomorrow.”

“What do you mean?” Clarke’s head snaps at Octavia who swallows hard and grabs an idle cup of moonshine standing by, drowning it in one go before meeting her eyes again.

“I’m taking him with me, Clarke.”

“No!” she stands up and her own cup falls on the ground, the liquid spilling by her feet.

“Sit down and listen to me.” Octavia orders but when Clarke doesn’t move she takes her hand with gentleness Clarke didn’t knew she possessed and pulls her carefully down.”Hear me out, please.”

“Octavia, you can’t-”

“Give me two minutes to explain and then you can yell all you want at me, alright?” she squeezes her hand trying to prove her point and Clarke finally exhales, giving her a fast curt nod. 

“I don’t know what exactly is going on between you two. When I pressure him to talk about it, he always finds a way out, I think it’s because he can’t face it really but he did blurt one night that he will make sure he does everything in his power not to hurt you.” at that Clarke huffs. 

“I know, I told him it was bullshit but...” she squeezes her hand again and Clarke looks up “That’s not really the point here, Clarke. What happened to him...that’s forever. I don’t know if he has fully let it sink in yet. I don’t know if you have either and before you argue, I don’t think you have” Clarke closes her eyes. 

Octavia was right, she was about to interrupt her and tell her that she knows very well it’s not going to be the same for him ever again.

“Knowing is one thing. Facts...are one thing, actually living through it is another. And he needs to live through it, Clarke. He can’t stay here and be coddled by you and our friends. It won’t help him.”

“And how would coming with you help?” she asks trying to hide the bitterness from her voice but failing terribly.

“There is a blind man in our village. His name is Kai. He’s a warrior, Clarke and he’s helped other blind people before. I know he can do so for, Bell. He’ll teach him how to be independent, how to use his other senses, how to fight even.”

Clarke ducks her head away trying to hide her tears. 

“I know you want to help him but...if what he’s told me is true, then you love him and because you do you’ll never be able to push him the way he needs to be.”

“I just want him to be fine!” Clarke blurts.

“I know. That’s what I want for him too. I’m not blaming you, I can’t help him either, I’m too impatient. All I will do is scold and yell at him but not really teach him anything he can use. That’s why he needs someone better.”

She brushes a tear away from her cheek and turns her back to Octavia just barely, taking a minute there to compose herself. 

“He’s still weak....can he made the ride?” she finally asks.

“Your mother said he can, we just need to take it slowly.” Octavia reassures.

“His bandage, you need to learn how to-”

“Your mom already showed me.” dammit, she thought of everything. No one could blame Octavia for being a bad sister. 

“His ribs they hurt him when he walks too long and his knee...he can’t stay up too much, okay?”

“Okay, I’ll make sure he doesn’t.”

“And he has to eat. He’s lost too much weight.”

“I’ve stuffed our bags with meat and fruit. I’ll feed him myself if I have to.” Octavia reaches out and takes her hand again “I’ll look after him, Clarke.” she smiles and stares down at her feet finding it hard to utter what she has in mind.

“How long before you come back?””

“I don’t know” Octavia says honestly and stands up “As long as he needs to.”

“Okay.” Clarke whispers quietly more to herself as a mantra that she tells herself so she doesn’t completely go insane.

“We leave at first dawn. He didn’t want you to know because it’d make saying goodbye harder, but you should be there.” Clarke nods and watches her leave. 

After a few minutes spent staring at the fire, she grabs a hold of another full of moonshine cup and brings it to her lips.

She was losing the love of her life tomorrow, a glass or two would not hurt.

They won’t make his face disappear from her mind either but she liked thinking she can still get the opposite effect. 

\--------------------------------

She barely gets any sleep. In the morning she wills herself to wait long enough for him and Octavia to make it to the gates. The only other people awake are the guards positioned at the gates but overall the camp’s still asleep in the early spring morning. 

There’s a chill that day, it seems like it would probably rain and normally she’d welcome it because she liked gloomy days but today it just adds to the sadness pulling her down. 

Octavia’s stuffing their bags with what seems to be like packages of food and extra blankets while he holds Helios’reins. 

The horse seems to love him, breathing him in, shoving his muzzle in his hand, probably looking for treats. Bellamy simply raises his hand in the air and the horse nudges it with his head, knowing, sensing that there’s something wrong with this human and he needs to help somehow.

“Bellamy” she calls his name quietly and Octavia turns from her spot. He tenses, his head moves in the direction of her voice and she can see the calmness decapitate from his body. 

“You told her” he turns to Octavia who simply huffs and throws her hands in the air.

“Of course I did.” then she looks at Clarke “You got ten minutes.” she heads to the mess hall probably in hope of catching Miller and the rest of the kids who have woken up for breakfast, to say goodbye and Clarke slowly approaches him. 

“You’re not going to change my mind.” he starts and she wants to laugh because he’s so damn stubborn sometimes it physically hurt.

“I’m not trying to.” 

That seems to take him by surprise, his mouth falls a little and once again she wishes she could see his eyes.

She takes another step forward and wraps her arms around his neck, playing with the curls on the back of his neck. 

She closes her eyes and breathes him in, giving herself one last indulgence before he’s gone and she feels himself lean in.

“Clarke”

“Shh, give me a minute, okay?” he nods. 

Her hands slide to his face, cupping his cheeks gently, there are still cuts and bruises there and he seems so pale, like a ghost even, like he’s barely holding onto this world, like something’s pulling him down so hard he can’t breathe. 

Her fingers ghost over his lips, his nose, then when she reaches the bandage covering his eyes, she starts pulling it up and he grabs her wrists.

“It’s okay. I need to see you one last time.” he takes a second before he loses his grip, giving her silent permission and she pulls the black cloth up. 

She almost gasps at the sight of his eyes again, like she did when he was first brought in medbay, but she grits her teeth, clenches her jaw and swallows down her feelings. 

Her thumbs stroke his red eyelids. The wounds are still there and the ugly cream her mom put on them to keep them from infecting smelled quite nasty. That one time, she recalls, he told her he hated it at first but then got used to. It was better than the smell of something burnt that he sensed just after he was blown away. 

He told her he’ll never forget how awful it smelled and how he wished he had passed out. But he had never been that lucky. He had felt it all-the pain, the blood, the burns until the rest of their people found him. 

“Do they hurt still?”

“Not as much anymore.” 

“Liar.” she says with a quiet smile, he always did that, he’d probably say he’s having the best time in the world even on his dead bed. He proves her words true when she stands on her toes and places a kiss on his eyes before pulling the bandage back down. 

But she doesn’t stop there. Her lips move to his cheek, his nose, then finally...his lips. 

At first he doesn’t kiss her back but maybe her tears wetting is face make him break because one minute he’s completely frozen and the next his lips crash against hers and his hands come to wrap around her waist. 

Then he slows down, they both do, they take their time, their hands exploring each other’s backs, moving up and down, digging into each other’s hairs, holding each other’s necks, cupping each other’s faces.

And when they pull back he’s crying too. 

“Do you hate me-” he whispers and she looks up at him confused. 

He looks so small, even child-ish like as if the world has crumbled in his feet and he found himself in the ruins of something he just couldn’t patch up or fix it in any way.

“Why would I hate you?” she asks confused her nails digging in his cheeks just barely, trying to bring him back to her before he loses himself in the darkness.

“I’m leaving you behind.”

“I left you behind too after Mount Weather. I needed healing. So do you now.”

“Do you...do you still-”

“Yes. Always.” she assures, wondering how it could ever cross his mind that she could fall out of love with him.”That’s not going to change. Ever.”

“I don’t want you to wait around for me, okay? If you fall in love, if you...feel like leaving camp, if you want to travel the world and never come back, I want you to do it. Can you promise me you’ll do it?”

She doesn’t answer for a bit, she can’t. The words are stuck in her throat so she just tightens her grip and nuzzles her head in his neck.

She wishes so desperately that this never happened to him, that he didn’t have to suffer, that he would go on and be a stubborn ass bossing everyone all the time, building cabins, arranging guard shifts, missing his sister, coming home to her, cuddling with her under their big furs. 

She wishes all of that for him instead of pain but that’s what he got. Her eyes fill with tears once again and they wet his shirt.

“Clarke, please.”

“I promise.” she whispers even though she doesn’t believe it one bit.

Octavia clears her throat behind them and they pull away so abruptly, she feels like someone knocks the breath out of her lungs. 

He scratches the back of his neck and looks away like a shy fifteen year old while she fumbles with her hands not really knowing where to put them.

“We need to go now, big brother.” O says and comes by his side. Clarke nods, hiding her tear-stained face away as she opens her bag and starts taking stuff from it that she shoves in Octavia’s hands.

“Here, extra bandages. The linen ones that he likes. And some of that greasy cream you can put on your ribs when you feel like they’re burning.”

“Clarke, I’ll be fine.” he tries but she won’t have it.

“Some apples for the road and make sure you drink lots of water so you stay hydrated.” she keeps blabbing whatever comes to mind and giving Octavia things that she struggles to put in their already full packs until the younger Blake grips her arm and gives her a look. 

Clarke stops and lets her hands fall loosely around her. Octavia gives her a quick hug and then helps Bellamy climb on Helios, after which she jumps in front of him and wraps his arms around her waist so he doesn’t fall. 

“Take care of him for me, okay?” Clarke asks, gently touching Octavia’s leg. 

“You know I will.” she promises and Bellamy reaches his hand out to her, she grips it hard one last time and kisses his knuckles.

Before she knows it, she’s standing at the gates, watching as Octavia rode Helios through the fields, happy, free, moving with purpose, taking the only person Clarke ever loved, away.

She brushed the tears from her eyes and watched until their figures disappeared over the horizon. 

Then she turned around and faced an already full of people camp, she fist her hands and grit her teeth-she had tons of stuff to do.


	4. The feeling empty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So! Again I wrote more. Now that they're separated, I wrote a Clarke part and a Bellamy part but because together they got too long I decided to split them. I will admit, I was worried to post that one because this is a more descriptive chapter, it digs more into the psychological side of things and it doesn't have that much dialogue. It has one of my favorite dynamics, though-Clarke and the delinquents and Clarke and Raven so I hope you'll like that at least.
> 
> Comments are much appreciated. I still don't know what exactly I'm doing and where I'll take this but I appreciate your support!
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @jasperjoordan !

Clarke wants to say that after he leaves everything remains the same, but the truth is, things change. And the biggest problem of them all was that she didn’t realize how much _she_ changed.

She told herself she was just throwing herself in more work because it was needed, because summer was just beginning, cabins had to be build, big decisions had to be made, preparation for the winter needed to start as soon as the first really hot day hit because three months won’t be enough for them to get ready for the heavy snow storms and she didn’t want to relive last winter which they barely survived.

So when she starts taking more and more shifts in medbay, she tells herself it’s because she wants to get better, because she refuses to let another child die from pneumonia when the snow hits, because she wants to be able to operate on a person and not just set bones or stitch cuts. 

And she does get better and fast. 

She studies hard under her mother and Jackson, shadows them all the time, makes them show her things, spends hours in the storage room in medbay, the only place where it was truly quiet, reading anatomy books from an old tablet.

She even travels south and east, the newly founded peace came with trade treaties between Trikru and Arkadia and she stayed for a few weeks with Nyko, their best healer, learning more about herbal medicine and which plans they could use for the different problems they were handling.

Her mother’s happy at first at this newly found enthusiasm in medicine, she even gives her a leather bound book where Clarke starts writing everything she learned from the grounders down, drawing plants and flowers, locations where they could be found and how they can be useful.

But then Abby sees through her-she finds her way too often asleep on a cot instead in her own tent, she skips meal after meal to the point that one day she even passes out because she was dehydrated and it was a hundred degrees outside. 

She scolds her then, tries to talk to her but Clarke simply shakes her head, cuts her off and heads home.

She doesn’t realize how cold and distant she’s become with the delinquents too. 

The constant invites that Monty and Harper give about her joining them for dinner by the campfire or for a party Jasper is throwing just outside the gates, are always declined. 

And it’s not like she doesn’t talk to them or spend time with them-it’s how she does it, always to give them another task for the day, to tell them something the council has decided, to give strategic advice about where to build a cabin or put the base for a new smoke house. 

But she doesn’t respond to their smiles or the gentle squeezes of their hands on her arm, she finds herself completely shutting off when they talk sometimes, her mind wandering to places far away from her, picturing certain black messy hair blind idiots who own her heart. 

They see it, they realize it, all of them and they are gentle with her. 

Until that gentleness turns into fear because she’s snapping too much or she’s simply not paying any attention to anything that’s going on in their lives that isn’t about their survival. 

They grow wary of her, avoid her when they see her early in the morning and whenever she gathers them to give them a briefing for the week’s tasks that need to be completed, they are quiet, compliant and leave as soon as she’s done. 

When she’s not in medbay, she’s in an a council meeting and when she’s not there, she’s home, lying on her cot with a blanket thrown over her head, crying.

At first his scent was still on his side of the bed-the pillow, the sheets even the blanket-it all smelled like him. 

She could close her eyes and picture him right there next to her, lying on his stomach as he usually slept, one arm hanging from his side of the cot, the other loosely wrapping her body. 

He snored but just barely, he’d told her so did she and she wouldn’t believe him.

It was funny that in their...relationship or whatever Clarke could call it, she was the cuddler. 

Bellamy liked touching-his hand peppering her face or outlining her spine or drawing circles on her stomach he really loved lying his head on her chest and breathing her in. It was almost unbelievable that he never really kissed her before the accident.

_It was tragic it only happened after._

But it was her who when she woke up too early in the morning, wrapped herself all over him. She’d climb on his back and embrace him and he’d scoff, pretending to be annoyed by her weight but he really enjoyed it.

And after he got hurt, no...she always mentally scolded herself when she thought of it like that, he didn’t just get hurt, _**he fucking went blind**_ , his sleep schedule was a giant torturous mess.

He’d lay on his back and fall for half an hour, sometimes even less, then he’d wake up with a jolt, sitting upright, gasping for air or sometimes with an inhumane yell. 

She’d grab his arms and wrap herself around him like before but he’d be in so much pain and so exhausted and embarrassed by what just happened that he’d lay back down and turn his back on her, breathing heavily,crying, feeling weak. 

“What can I do?” she’d ask, still spooning him despite his efforts to push her away.

“Talk” he begs, gripping his fingers with his hand tightly “Tell me something, anything.”

“You know you’re the storyteller out of the two of us.” he’d laugh and push his head in her, searching for some kind of relief. 

He couldn’t ask for help, not verbally at least, but she quickly learned that her cold hand on his burning forehead was welcomed and extremely appreciated and her fingers running through his messy curls calmed him and the only thing lulling him back to sleep was her humming him any song she knew from her childhood and teenage years.

She was a crap storyteller but she could sing relatively decently. Sometimes she told him about Wells and all the stupid shit they’d done as kids.

He’d fall back asleep and awake with another jolt an hour or two later. She’d tighten her grip on his body and hum a melody trying to bring him back to peace. 

Mostly she was successful, but some nights he had been so anxious and frustrated and so desperately in pain that he’d get up and go outside, lying on the cold ground gripping the grass with his hands and waiting, simply waiting for it all to pass. 

Now she longed for those nights too, even the painful ones. 

She wondered who’s helping him calm down now, was Octavia there when he yelled? Was he all alone? Did he have nightmares at all? 

It’s been three months since he was gone and she had no news of him. 

Whenever Indra came by which wasn’t often, she’d prod and ask about Octavia but she wouldn’t get anything in return but raised eyebrows and clenched jaws. 

As far as she knew the village was literally on the border between Trikru and Azgeda and Indra rarely went there herself unless there were some problems between the clans. 

Theoretically, she knew Octavia must still have that radio Bellamy gave her and that if there was an emergency, she could probably contact them.

But then she asked herself what count as an emergency?

Her heart beating out of her chest whenever she thought of him and struggled to breathe, probably having a panic attack?

The tears wetting her pillow and her inability to sleep for more than a few hours herself?

Her trembling hands, her constant headaches, the fact that she had grown quite fond of having a few glasses of moonshine in the evening and passing out?

Or the conversation she heard the delinquents have that one early July evening when she walked by Raven’s tent?

“I don’t care about Kane!” she hears Raven say “You need to talk to Clarke. You guys can’t be send back there to the same place Bellamy got blown up!”

“You know we need the generator, Raven. It’d help things around significantly. We could use it for the cabins-not just for building them but also getting electricity inside and we could hot wire the main gate too.” Miller opposes “Kane is doing it for all the right reasons.”

“Yeah, that’s why he came directly to you guys instead of telling Clarke about it.” Harper’s voice chimes in “I vote no. This is dangerous and even if Raven comes with us and uses the mine detector, there are no guarantees.”

What the hell are they talking about?

“Are there?” Monty this time, probably looking at Raven if she had to guess.

“Some of those stuff are old, they can’t be picked up by my device. But our chances would be significantly better with it.”

“What about the ark generator?” Miller again.

“That thing is barely operating now as it is. I’m putting whatever capacity it has left for the medbay quarters and the council chambers, otherwise it’s as good as gone.” Raven explains impatiently “I still think we need to talk to Clarke.”

“And tell her what?” she didn’t even know Jasper was there and she almost jumps at his voice “Clarke, Kane is sending us off to a secret mission because he doesn’t want you to know that we might die or get blown up like the love of your life.”

And that’s the final straw for her. She grabs the tarp and walks in to find them all sitting around Raven’s table full of junk and metal parts. 

They all grow silent when they see her, she must look really scary to them and the fact that she for once realizes what kind of an effect she has on them, startles her and makes her deflate. 

“What’s going on?” she demands and at the sound of that they all look down at their feet which makes her feel even more guilty “Just tell me, please.”

Raven sighs rubbing her forehead with two fingers and leaning on the metal table.

“Clarke, do you know why Bellamy was where he was when he got blown off?” Clarke shakes her head at that and takes a step forward “He knew there was a generator we could get from the place where Factory station crashed. He was aware that we’d need it. I randomly threw that piece of information the night before. He was walking with Kane by the gates when they saw me and I suggested we try to get our hands on it if we want to survive the next winter.” 

Clarke swallows hard. He never told her that. 

In fact all she knew about that day was that he was out hunting and they decided to rage one of the old bunkers nearby. 

She never asked him for details, never thought there was more to it than just an accident. 

“He volunteered right away, said he’d head with Miller and Monty first thing in the morning.”

“We had no idea there was an old minefield in there.” Miller adds and she feels her eyes fill with tears. She looks away before they could notice it but there wasn’t really a way to hide either. “Or grounder traps placed nearby to lead you exactly where they wanted you too because obviously they knew about it.”

“He was the first out the rover, he led us all, that’s why he got hurt the most.” Monty adds, his voice thin and scared.

She suddenly can’t handle it, can’t imagine him being there, rifle in hand, storming bravely on before he sets off one of those things that throw him off the air and then the others follow by. 

She turns her back on them and covers her face with her hands.

“Clarke-”

“He never told me” she whispers more to herself than to them. “He never said anything.”

“Clarke, you don’t have to do this alone” she hears Monty’s voice and someone’s arms wrapping around her shoulders. 

She instinctively tries to pull away but they hold her close.

“Clarke, open your eyes” another voice, Miller’s this time. He grabs her wrists carefully and pries her hands from her face “Hey, look at me, okay?” he begs and she finally complies. 

“We’re here, okay? We are here.” he says slowly and she finally crumbles. Miller’s hands wrap around her and then the others follow, piling up on her until she feels like she’s in a tunnel and she’s so warm and safe-a comfort she couldn’t find hiding under the blanket in her tent. 

When they finally pull away, she’s brushing her tears away with embarrassment but Raven’s hand stays on her shoulder, rubbing it gently.

“I’ve been so horrible to you guys.”

“We know.” Jasper gives her a knowing smirk.

“But it’s fine.” Monty adds carefully “You’re hurting and we understand.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to be an ass to you all, though.”

“It’s okay. From now on, though, we do it all together, alright?” Raven begs and Clarke gives her a curt nod “And if you ever feel like talking, crying or just simply sitting in silence with us while you feel bad, you can come to any of us. We got you, Clarke.”

“Okay” she still can’t face them all and they know she needs a few minutes by herself so they all give her one last hug or pat on the shoulder and leave. All of them but Raven.

“He’ll be back, you know?” she whispers “He’ll get it together and come back. He just needs some time. But until he does, you’re not alone.”

“Thank you, guys. For...for everything.” she whispers and Raven pulls her for another hug, this time she squeezes tightly and when she finally lets her go she kisses her forehead and brushes the tears from her cheeks away “Now what do you say we have a girl’s night tonight all of us-me, Harper and you-and get drunk, huh?”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Well, I do” she grabs her hand and pulls her outside. 

It doesn’t fix things. Getting drunk. It never does but it’s something, it makes it a bit more bearable. 

She starts spending more time with them again. Sometimes they sense she’s too sad so they push her out of her shell-make her have dinner with them or tag along to the river.

They also make a plan to get to the generator and this time they pull through, coming home safely with Clarke leading the mission and managing to bring them all back without a scratch.

But things aren’t always easy. They never could be. 

Months pass, they build most of the cabins, they fix the generator so they have electricity, they prepare for the winter, trade with Trikru and Trishanakru, getting more pelts and sewing more winter clothes. 

They hunt and they hunt hard-parties going out the gates three times a day.

She keeps working in medbay most the time but she likes going out hunting with Miller, Monty and Harper sometimes when she is feeling to anxious and needs an outlet.

In one of those trips outside she gets stabbed by a boar in the side. She’s bleeding like hell and by the time they bring her home, she’s lost so much blood they think she won’t make it.

When they put her on the cot in medbay and she registers her mom and Jackson hovering over her, yelling, working as fast as they can, pressing the bleeding wound so it would just stop spilling, she stares at the bright lamps above her and sees him. 

She is stupid enough to think he’s actually there and she tries to sit up but cold hands push her down. 

Was it Raven? Miller? She has no idea-she can hear them talk but none of the words make sense.

Then they inject her with something and from sharp the pain grows to be more dull-still present, but a little lighter. 

She still feels like all of the blood is spilling out from her and she vaguely registers the fact that they roll her on her side, take off her jacket, then her mom cuts off her black top and they push an oxygen mast to her face which she fights with.

Her face falls to the side and she still sees him there, right next to Raven, dressed in his usual jacket and black pants, that blue shirt with the too many holes in it. 

He’s not blind. Not now, his deep brown eyes are so bright and warm and when he reaches out to cup her hand she sees they’re full of tears.

“Hold on, princess, okay? Hold on for me.”

“Bellamy-” she reaches out but some hand grabs her wrist and pushes her to her side. She struggles again, tries to twist away from their strong grip but she can’t.

“Keep her down!” someone yells. Was it her mother’s voice?

Where was he? He disappeared. She starts panicking, looking right and left for him and she manages to free her hand and remove the mask.

“Bellamy?” she asks looking around frantically”Bell?”

“Let’s just knock her out already, she needs surgery anyway!” another voice cuts her desperate attempts off.

“Bellamy? Where’s Bell?” she asks and she sees Raven on her left, holding her by the elbow. Was she the one pushing her down? Was she keeping her still?

“Clarke-”

“He was here. He was right here.” she mumbles and looks left of her, hoping to see him again but he’s not there. 

Then she feels a needle pushed in her neck and her head falls back on the pillow. 

Someone’s hand cups her cheek and the touch reminds her of Bellamy, but this one is too soft, lacking the callouses covering his fingers, and the usual warmth he possessed, he has always been a furnace, igniting her with every light graze of his fingers on her body, was simply not there. 

She still lets herself pretend it’s him but her heart skips a beat and there’s something hallow in her chest that prevents her from taking a good breath and the last thing she registers as she loses consciousness is the tears falling down her cheeks. 

_Something inside her breaks after that._

She doesn’t know what it is exactly but she lies in medbay burning with fever for a week and then stays another one because she keeps pushing herself to walk and reopens her wound which makes her mother and Jackson so desperate that they decide to put someone to babysit her. 

The delinquents are quick to offer their services and she tries to pull a good show on for them, pretending to be fine, but Raven knows she whispers his name when the fever is at it’s peak and when she wakes up with her clothes drenched in her sweat she asks her if she wants to get in touch with him but Clarke’s answer is always a quiet trembling “No”. 

She makes them promise they won’t radio him, tells them if they do, she won’t talk to them again and they are as desperate and broken as she is. 

One time Raven and her even fight about it.

“Clarke, this is not fair. You know that if it was him, you’d want to know!”

“What exactly do you think he’ll do when he gets here, Raven? He’s blind and he’s trying to get his life together. He can’t come home and sit by my bed because I got a scratch while I was hunting.”

“You almost died!”

“So did he!”

“And you were there for him!”

“I said no.” Clarke cuts her off and rolls on her side, turning her back to Raven, trying to tell her the conversation is over. But her friend simply won’t have it.

Raven sits on the edge of the cot and touches her shoulder gently.

“Why?” she says trying to understand her instead of simply scolding her like the rest of them.

“Because I want him to come home on his own terms, when he’s ready, when he feels like this is the right thing to do. I don’t want to force him to come running back here because of me. I don’t want to trap him inside this camp all over again without him having a way out.” she whispers and Raven’s hand moves from her shoulder to her hair, brushing it away from her side gently, soothingly. 

The gesture almost makes Clarke cry-she had forgotten what having a friend was like since she lost Wells and Bellamy left.

“My wound will heal but he’ll still be blind and if he’s not feeling better yet, all of this-him leaving, trying to get better, would be for nothing.”

“You love him so much, don’t you?” she nods and feels the tears prickle at her eyes again so she buries her face in the pillow and lets her body shake with all the pain from losing him. “I know you’ll hate me for saying it but...have you thought of what will happen if he...doesn’t come back home?”

Clarke shrugs and tries to normalize her breathing, brushing the tears from her face away and twisting her head so she can finally meet Raven’s eyes.

“If he doesn’t....then it’d hurt, but I’d understand.”

“But you’d still love him?”

“I’ll always love him.” Clarke states with certainty and turns her head back, facing the wall. Raven stays quiet for a few minutes, then Clarke hears her shuffle behind her, removing the blanket and lying next to her, spooning her, careful of her wound and pulling her back closer to her chest.

“I’m here for you, Griffin.” she whispers “No matter what.” Clarke covers her hand with hers and squeezes it tightly.

This is more than she could ever hope for. 

It’s only when the first snow hits that she realizes how alone she is. 

She’s just started going back to work after the boar incident and she was finally feeling herself a little bit more free and independent without anyone hovering all over her. 

She opens the door of her small cabin, the one Miller and the rest of them build especially for her, near medbay but also close enough to Raven’s one, when she is faced with the white-covered ground.

She takes a step forward, stares at the sky, sees the snowflakes fall. 

Does it snow here he is too?

It’s been six months. She had this stupid hope that it’d be just the right amount of time for him to get better and come home. 

She doesn’t know why she thought it, what made her even consider it, but somewhere in the back of her mind, there was a tiny voice that said ”He’ll probably be back in six months, it’s enough time for him to get better. Yes, he’ll be back.”

And then there was another tiny voice that had been going on and on and on in her head in the past few weeks, making her feel excited and optimistic that it would be exactly today that he comes home. 

“Hey!” she hears Raven’s voice calling her and when she turns to the left she finds her and Miller rushing by her side. “How’s the birthday girl doing?” Clarke smiles and comes down the stairs of her tiny front porch. 

They throw themselves in her embrace and hold her close.

“Come on, Jasper has something special for you in the mess hall.” Miller announces and she doesn’t miss the prideful tinge in his voice.

“Is it something that could kill me?” she jokes.

“Most probably.” Raven laughs and grabs her hand “Let’s go!”

And she follows them. But as she does, she looks up at the sky again and bites back her tears. 

She’s tired of crying, she’s tired of feeling weak, she’s tired of hopefully waiting for him. 

Her look falls on the gates again-they’re closed and she takes in a deep shuddering breath.

She loved him. She loved him with her whole heart and she’ll love him for as long as she’s alive. 

But he wouldn’t want that for her.

And she doesn’t want it for herself either.

He’s gone. And maybe he’ll come back. Or maybe he won’t.

But it was time for her to move on too. 

It was time for her to start living again.


	5. A wide empty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you so much for reading! This, as promised, is Bellamy's part. You'll get to see what's going on with him! Comments are much appreciated!
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @jasperjoordan!
> 
> Edit: The tags are updated and I have also changed the chapter thing because it showed the fic is finished before when that is not yet the case. Please read the tags and if you do not feel like reading Angst, then maybe that is not the story for you. I have had a bad experience with my last long chapter fic when people yelled at me even though everything was tagged and I do not want to relive that, so please read and decide for yourselves.

“You’re distracted!” Kai scolds as he shoves his stick under Bellamy’s legs and trips him fast and hard on his back. 

Bellamy groans, the loud thud shakes his entire body and he can hear Ares whine a bit behind them. “And your left leg is still lagging behind.”

“Nyko said I’m stuck with a light limp.” Bellamy explains as he sits up trying to catch his breath “It won’t be fixed.”

That gets him another hit on the hand. 

Kai didn’t accept whining, complaining. Those were forbidden. If he did it, he got hit by his stick wherever Kai felt like-his hands, his legs, sometimes his head, reminding him it’s stupid and weak to complain about things you can’t change.

It’s been six months since he came here and at first they had arrived with Bellamy barely holding on. 

The road to the village was hard and proved to be too strenuous for his still weak body. He spend the first two days in a cot in a room in his sister’s and Lincoln’s cabin. He fought a fever but the pain shaking his entire body- that was the worst of it.

On the third day, Kai, the grounder they had come for, payed them a visit and dragged him by the collar outside.

“Your sister tells me you want to get better? That’s why she brought you here?” he asks and Bellamy clears his throat nervously.

“I do.”

“Then what are you doing wasting your time in bed?”

“I was tired. Ouch!” he had been hit in the ribs. The broken ribs. “What was that for?”

Kai sighs, he puts his hand on his shoulder, Bellamy had no idea how he even knew where his shoulder was, but lets Kai lead him away from the voices of the village. 

He had no idea how this man even looked like. 

Octavia had described him as about forty years old, tall, very broad and big, with long brown beard and hair tied in a ponytail, looking like a literal mountain. 

He was a warrior, a hunter even and had a family here-a wife and four kids. And that was about all that she knew and told him on the way here.

It wasn’t a lie.

But there was a lot more to him as Bellamy came to find out later.

“If you want me to help you, there are some rules to follow. You have to decide if you want that, Belomi. If you don’t, we can stop wasting your time and more importantly, my time. The only reason I agreed to this, was because Indra and Lincoln are old friends of mine and they had saved my life more than once, but I do not trust a sky person, alright?”

“I-”

“You and your Wanheda burned twenty soldiers from my village. One of them was a close friend of mine. His wife and children are struggling now because he’s gone.”

Bellamy didn’t know what to say to that so he just kept his head low and remained silent. 

He could defend himself. Say that the grounders attacked them in the first place but he felt that this was not the right time to do so. 

“Are you ready to hear my rules?” Kai asks in a bit after the long torturous moment of silence passes.

“Yes.”

He talked for fifteen minutes. 

There were so many rules,Bellamy had a hard time remembering all of them and he considered himself a good listener. 

He had to do whatever Kai said. He had to get up early, train with him, then eat lunch, then work on his dexterity, then train his hearing and his other senses, then train again, then clean himself up in the river, have dinner and go to bed. 

No excuses were allowed-if he felt bad, he had to get over it. Kai didn’t care that his ribs still haven’t healed or that his leg dragged by or that he struggled to breathe sometimes. 

No complains. Ever. No defiance either, no talking back no matter what.

He also had to help Kai too and by help, the grounder understood basically Bellamy being his handyman. 

He made him carry water for his family early in the morning or bring them food from the kitchen or take care of his children while Kai and his wife Tara were out of camp. 

He had to take responsibility not just for himself. If he fucked up, he was punished. Fifty sit ups, a hundred push ups, sleeping outside instead of with Octavia, skipping dinner. 

It all had a price. 

He was really stern with him. 

When they trained sometimes, Bellamy came home with more bruises and cuts than after the accident. 

Octavia was mad at first. She’d sit him on the chair near the table and help him clean up, sanitize the cuts, bandage him up. 

She was growing increasingly worried. Maybe she was wrong? Maybe Kai wasn’t meant to help Bellamy? Maybe he hated the sky people and was trying to get some sick revenge for his dead friend by torturing Bellamy?

And it wasn’t just her who thought that. Even Lincoln and Indra who knew Kai and his methods believed he was taking it to a next level with Bellamy.

But Bellamy didn’t care. He wasn’t going to break. He came here for a reason. 

He left Clarke for a reason-to get better, to do better, to become independent so he could help her out, help them all out. 

This wasn’t just about him. It was about all of them-the delinquents, his home.

“This is just like cadet training” he kept telling Octavia to which she scoffed as she brushed the blood away from the cut on his cheek. 

He was lying and she knew it. If anything, this must’ve been what the Marine’s preparations for battle and operations looked like before the Apocalypse. At least from what he’s heard from the guards on the Ark. But he had a few suspicions that Kai’s training was even more brutal than that. 

“You never came home that bruised at battered on the Ark. I remember and I was a kid.” 

“I’m fine.”

“You’ll be lucky if you can piss on your own tomorrow, big brother.” at that Lincoln laughs and Bellamy imagines him shaking his head with a light smirk. 

His sister did have a nice sense of humor, he couldn’t deny it. But her sarcasm proved to be merciless sometimes.

“Maybe we should talk to him.”

“NO!” Bellamy would oppose “No, I’m doing that. I don’t care how much it hurts. I’m used to it by now.” and it was true. 

His threshold for pain has grown immensely. The first months here he might’ve not done amazing progress, but one thing was for sure-he learned how to deal with pain. 

He’d swallow his tears, clench his jaw and just keep going, no matter how much it hurt.

Octavia still insisted on Nyko taking a look at him when he was visiting the village. There were a few injuries from the accident that wouldn’t heal besides the most obvious one. His knee that had caught a shrapnel was numb more often than not and his elbow wouldn’t bend all the way in but Bellamy could live with that. He learned to.

Of course there were still the psychological wounds too. 

He woke up with nightmares more often than not since he came here but then they changed from constantly dreaming about being thrown in the air and his mouth filling with ash and his bones burning, to seeing Clarke by the gates at camp, crying, reaching out for him but never touching him, begging him to come home or worse-her being hurt, cuts and bruises covering her whole torso and then him looking down and realizing he was holding the knife.

The first three months were bad. But then a few things happened. 

First, he met Ares. He was coming home from the river after training with Kai for two hours and he heard a quiet whimpering. He had stopped then and tried to put into practice all the lessons Kai had given him.

Relying on his hearing (which was also real crappy according to Kai) and following an unfamiliar but surely animal scent, he trudged with his wooden stick to the left and heard the whimpering growing louder.

He kneeled down when he was certain he was where he was supposed to be and when he reached out and whispered quiet reassurances, he was met with soft fur. 

He carefully used his hands to feel it-it was a dog. 

Or maybe a wolf dog? They had those here in these parts of the Trikru territories. 

Big dogs-half wolves, half dogs that they used for hunting. They were believed to be a great force of power and friends for life. 

He had heard the grounders talk that the dog chose the owner, not the other way around and if it felt you’re not their person, they’d jump on and kill you.

So he realized fully that this very well could be the end for him but he still reached out and pulled closer. 

Judging by what his hands could feel, it wasn’t a full grown dog-it was medium of size but surely strong. It was probably on the edge between being a kid and a teenager according to human standards.

He found his back left leg was trapped to a snare and it was twisted in an unnatural angle. There was some blood too and when his hand reached out to free him, the dog jolted violently. 

“Shhh, I know it hurts. I know.” he whispered soothingly, stroking his soft fur “But I’m trying to help you. It will be over soon, I promise.” and he had felt the animal relax against him or at least somewhat.

He freed him quickly and without much effort and though he was sure that he would probably be fine on his own-the bone could heal and the wound would close, the dog followed him all the way to camp.

When the next day he came for his morning session with Kai with the dog following by, limping just as he was, the grounder had smelled it and groaned.

“You got yourself a dog?”

“I freed him from a trap. He followed me home. He won’t leave my side now.”

Kai sighed and pretended to be annoyed with Bellamy as he usually was but he considered it a good thing. 

“A dog could help you if you train him well. He can be your eyes, but you’ll be responsible for him. You need to take care of him. Do you think you can do that?”

After a while Bellamy had dug his hand in the dog’s fur and smiled.

“Yes.”

And so it began. Kai trained Bellamy, Bellamy trained Ares, as he decided to name him. 

He became his best friend and he was quiet and patient with him, but he was also smart and he knew how to make Bellamy give him extra treats.

It got better from then on. Slowly but surely. 

He got better at fighting Kai. He could shower all on his own, go to the bathroom on his own, put his clothes without Octavia’s help, eat all by himself. 

When he needed something and he couldn’t get up because his leg hurt or he was too tired, Ares brought it for him. Or at least he tried-he still made mistakes too but he was great help.

He ate and grew stronger. In the morning before his training, he took Ares for a walk. Sometimes they even ran together through the fields and he felt himself breathe, really breathe, like he was free and nothing could stop him.

He could defend himself now. Use his stick the right way so he wouldn’t bump into things. 

He developed his hearing and used his scent to know when and who was approaching him. By now he could tell when Octavia was angry and annoyed when she came home before she even so much as said anything or when Lincoln had been out gathering herbs for Nyko before he could tell him so. 

He got better with his hands too. 

Kai wanted him to carve things from wood-figures, toys, “You could make a damn table for all I care!” he had said and at first Bellamy cut himself at least about fifty times but then his movements got swift and light as if he was touching the air and grabbing a hold of something that wasn’t there. 

Then Kai made him work with clay and then he made him knit which was very embarrassing at first and made Octavia laugh her ass out but it worked. 

It really did.

As stern as Kai was with him, he was smart and he knew what to do and how to handle Bellamy. Even when he was a stupid idiot who still felt guilty as hell for leaving Clarke and his friends behind.

But he knew that he wasn’t done with it. He still had a lot to learn. 

He could raise his stick and defend himself but he wouldn’t win, not yet. He still got lost sometimes. The other day when Kai made him go to the river and come back in an hour, he was lost in the woods and Octavia found him when the night had settled in, worried out of her mind and cursing Kai, who had come with her and was definitely not happy.

And he still had his off days. He still woke up sometimes unable to get up. Literally. It’s like something was pulling him down, making him unable to breathe. 

Kai didn’t push him when those days came. He’d come by and ask for him and the first time it happened, he had sat down and put his hands on his face and he had knows that Bellamy wasn’t faking it. 

He then squeezed his hand and told him he’d wait for him tomorrow. Or the day after that. Or the day he felt like he could do it. 

Octavia was scared during those days the most. He tend to lost himself so much. 

He wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t eat at all. He’d mostly sleep, he’d say he’s tired but sometimes he was anxious too, his leg bouncing up and down or his hand tapping the edge of the cot or even scratching his own skin which she had to come by and stop him from doing. He had enough scars as it was.

When he was sleeping, he’d call for Clarke and cry. Sometimes he would look as if he was dead which made her come by and lean closer to make sure he was breathing. 

She thought he could die from the sadness alone and when she told Kai that, he said she wasn’t wrong to fear it but that she had to give him time and understand him. 

Bellamy had expected Kai to be against all feelings, to give him the talk that Lexa gave Clarke about love being weakness but he was wrong.

Kai welcomed feelings even if he was a stone cold bastard during training, he grew to like Bellamy and even call him his friend.

His kids adored Bellamy, even his wife loved him and Kai guided him in a fatherly and friendly way that the older Blake has not known before that. 

But that didn’t stop him from calling him a stupid idiot too.

“You’re useless today.” Kai scolded once more. The first snow had fallen this morning, Bellamy was wet, angry and starving. But above it all, he was sad. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” he bit back a little faster than usually. Too curt, too stern and that earned him another hit, this time on the shoulder, by Kai. “I wasn’t talking back! I was just explaining!”

Another hit.

“Ah!”

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“Cause it sounded a lot like you were disapproving of my methods?”

“I’m sorry.”

Kai sighed.

“Get your dog to help you get up.”

Bellamy whistled and Ares came rushing by, licking his face and hands, but then when Bellamy said the word “Back!” the dog was behind him, pushing him up and he managed to get back on his feet a minute later. 

“Is it Wanheda?” Kai asked as they started walking back home. 

If Bellamy was distracted, it meant he couldn’t focus enough to work on his fighting technique. He had to work with his hands, calm down his anxiety. 

“Don’t call her that!” Bellamy groaned as he tried to catch up to him. The old man moved fast and Bellamy hated him for it because as much as he had progressed he was still slower.

“Fine. Is it your Clarke?” he corrected himself unwillingly.

“She has her birthday today.”

“What’s that?” Kai asks confused but curious. Bellamy quickly learned the grounder liked learning new things about the sky people as much as he was faking it at first.

“You know…celebrating the day you were born. Getting older?” Kai huffs as if that’s the most stupid thing he’s ever heard “It’s important. Do you even know how old you are?”

“Grounders count those things by the seasons, not the exact day or anything. I’m forty four summers old.”

“Were you even born in the summer?”

“No, I was born in the fall. But it doesn’t matter, look, years, age they do not count. What does is the kind of warrior and human you are and what you contribute to your-”

“People, yes yes, save me the speech, I know it by heart.” Bellamy cuts him off and they take a sharp turn to the right, towards the kitchen. 

“What are we having for lunch?” Kai asked testing him as he usually did to see if he was paying attention.

“Venison stew and potatoes. Maybe some peas too.” Bellamy says when they approach the table and are handed their bowls by a grounder woman.

“Is he right, Yolanda?” Kai asks though he knows perfectly what is in the bowl. He just liked rubbing shit in Bellamy’s nose.

“Sorry, Bellamy” she apologizes, her voice is thin and a bit squeaky but she’s really nice to him “It’s corn.”

Bellamy sighs and they head to the tables.

“That just earned you fifty push ups after lunch.” Kai announces and Bellamy grits his teeth, biting back a retort. “What did she smell like to you?”

“Herbs. No…spices. She was out in the fields before they started cooking.” 

“Good. But she also put too much pepper in this.” Kai adds and Bellamy can hear him stirring the bowl with his spoon and then the familiar sound of someone shoving too much food in his mouth followed “Oh, yeah, I’m right.”

“Do you have to gloat all the time?”

“Yes, because I’m better than you and because tomorrow sensing the pepper on someone’s clothes might just as well save your life.”

“Oh I’m sure it will.” that earned him a slap on the back of his head. Kai didn’t always need his stick to give punishment. 

“Fifty more push ups.” he announced and Bellamy squeezed his spoon so hard that if he wasn’t in control of his emotions, he might as well hit Kai with it on his head.

“So, this birthday thing. Is it a big deal for your people?”

“Kind of. Mostly we celebrate it, gather all our friends and have a nice meal and cake. You blow the candles and everyone hugs you and give you presents.”

“Hm.” is all Kai says and it’s the hm that gives Bellamy when he’s trying to decide if he finds this extremely curious or embarrassingly stupid. 

“I don’t usually celebrate mine but I wished I was there for hers now.”

“How come?”

“Well after Octavia was born I couldn’t really have friends over, plus I grew to think of it as a stupid thing. And we didn’t have many rations either so…”

“No, I mean why do you wish you were there for hers now?”

“Oh…” he scratches the back of his neck and adjusts his blindfold “Well, last year we were so busy preparing for the winter that she completely forgot about it. The year before that we were still at war. She deserves to have a party, be with her friends, get presents. She’s still so young, she should just…be young.”

“You’re young too.” Kai says with his mouth full. Sometimes he was a real pig. Especially when he ate. 

“Yeah, well I don’t feel it.”

“And you never will again. Being blind makes you older, wiser, like you’re carrying the world on your shoulders, a world you’ll never get to see again. But it doesn’t mean you stop living in it, Bellamy.”

“I know, I know.”

“No you don’t. And don’t talk back to me like a smartass. Listen to what I’m trying to tell you.”

“I am! It’s just that…” Bellamy sighs and pushes his plate away, a gesture that doesn’t go unnoticed by Kai “I feel guilty.”

“For what?” the grounder asks confused.

“Leaving her behind. All alone in the winter, taking care of everyone, making sure they survive.”

“Is she not Wanheda, the girl who conquers death? The leader of the sky people who destroyed our greatest enemy and burned 300 soldiers in a ring of fire?”

“It’s not like that. She’s just a girl. And she shouldn’t be doing all that on her own.”

“And you love her, do you not?”

“I do. With all my heart.”

“But you left your heart behind and came here to learn how to be better so you could be with her. So you could help your people, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Then there’s nothing to be guilty for. And instead of feeling sorry for yourself and for her, you need to get your stuff together and work hard to be stronger, better. For her and your people.” Bellamy quiets down after that and lets Kai’s words sink in.

“It’s get your shit together.” he mumbles after a while.

“What?” 

“We say get your shit together, not your stuff together. If you’re gonna use sky people dialect at least use it right. Ouch!” he rubs the back of his neck again which was now burning “I was just saying!”

“Shut up!” Kai scolds and pushes the bowl back in his hands “And eat! Unless you want more push ups.”

Bellamy sighs and grabs his spoon again. When he goes to bed that night all he can think about is blond hair and blue eyes. He dreams of taking her out in the fields and showing her a spot where he’s gonna build them their cabin but then it turns into a nightmare, dark clouds cover the ground and rain pours down them both so hard, he can barely see her. 

He yells her name and tries to grab her hand but she’s too far away.

“Clarke! Clarke, I’m here. I’m here!” he’s yelling but the storm swallows her whole and he wakes up from his sister’s hands peppering all over his face. 

His shirt’s drenched and he can hear the heavy winds outside.

It sounded scary, like hell breaking loose and the sky trying to swallow the world whole. 

But it was nothing compared to the storm raging inside him and his heart refusing to stop beating out of his chest.


	6. Count with me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you all for the comments! Once again I've changed the tags but I am still making a warning here:  
>  _ **!!!There's mentions of Panic Attacks and a little bit of smut in this chapter!!!**_ so read at your own risk. There's also a lot of angst! Let me know what you guys think! 
> 
> You can find me @jasperjoordan on tumblr.

Two days later Kai drags Bellamy by the healer’s tent because he literally can’t walk. It’s a good thing Nyko is paying their village a visit before the winter comes truly in all its terrifying glory because Kai can’t really think of another person who could kick Bellamy’s in a better way and make him listen.

And yet he proves difficult still.

“Yeah, you definitely twisted it” Nyko says with a sigh and Bellamy feels his big hands roam over his swollen knee. “You’ll need to keep off of it for at least a week, if not two.”

“No. No way!” Bellamy sits up in protest and swings his legs off the cot with a wince.

“Bellamy-” Kai’s voice intervenes.

“I’m fine. I’ll be all good tomorrow. We can still train.”

“No, you can’t. You already fucked it up enough as it is and it’s your injured leg so unless you want to make it worse, you need to listen to me.”

“Like hell, I do!”

“None of this would’ve happened if you just fell the right way, Blake.” he hears Kai approach their cot. And he wasn’t wrong. 

They’ve been training yesterday when Kai knocked him hard and shoved his stick under his feet-his favorite move- throwing Bellamy on his back. 

Somehow he just couldn’t learn how to block that attack. He couldn’t learn how to beat Kai and he was getting more and more frustrated. 

In the months here, all he’s ever achieved from these training lessons was block the attacks and fall the right way, but he has never beaten Kai, thrown him on his back or hurt him in any way. 

Not that he wanted to hurt him but in the last six months he had had more cuts and bruises than throughout his life and he wouldn’t mind being able to do the same if someone attacked him in real life. 

“What was the first thing I taught you, huh?” he asks but he sounds patient unlike Bellamy who wants to rage hell right now.

“Fall so that the ground wraps itself around your body and cushions the harshness of the attack” Bellamy recited and threw his arms in the air. “That doesn’t count when you push me out of nowhere!” he knows talking back will earn him a punishment but right now he doesn’t care. 

He tries to get back to his feet but his leg won’t hold him so Nyko’s hands grab a hold of his and push him back to the cot before he had done more damage.

“Stop it, Bellamy!” the healer scolds and he still sounds way more kind than Kai ever did.

“I always push you out of nowhere, that’s what an attack is called.”

“Yeah, right. Can I go home now?” he asks angrily and tries to get up again but this time Kai’s hand (how the hell did he know exactly where Bellamy was, dammit) pushes him back.

“Nyko, will you give us a minute, please?” the healer mumbles a quiet “Yes” and leaves the tent and Bellamy fists his hands trying to keep his emotions intact.

“You’re angry.” Kai states and Bellamy grits his teeth “It was about time you reached that stage.” the words surprise him and his jaw hangs a bit. 

“What? You think I don’t get angry? You think I don’t wonder what my kids look like exactly? Or my wife?”

Bellamy swallows hard, feeling guilty all of a sudden.

“You think I don’t fall sometimes too? Get hurt?”

“You do?”

“I do. Rarely because I’m a badass unlike you, but I do. And I get angry as well. It’s okay to be angry, Bellamy. It’s not okay to let that anger consume you and define your every action, alright?”

After a beat, Kai puts his hand on his shoulder and squeezes it tightly in support. 

Kai has been so stern with him all this time that Bellamy forgot sometimes that he was just like him-felt the same things, went through the same experiences. Just because he was better at handling it, didn’t mean he forgot the hardships of it.

“Why are you so mad?” he feels Bellamy’s shoulders lift just barely and then he stills. “You don’t know? Come on, you can do better than that.”

“It’s just…I’ve been here so long and I…” he trailed off uncertain as of how to go on.

“You miss home.”

“Yes.”

“And a certain blond sky princess with blue eyes and stubborn attitude.” he feels him shrug again and then lets go of his shoulders “Man, I really don’t know how she fell for your ugly face” Kai tries lightening the mood and Bellamy’s hand swings to slap him but of course the grounder senses it and simply moves a step back which frustrates Bellamy even more.

“How do you even know that I’m ugly? You’re blind!”

“Tara described you to me.” Kai explains patiently “And judging by her words, you’re one giant freckled curly haired mess who’s lost too much weight and looks like shit.”

“Wow, tell your wife I said thanks.” Bellamy groans and Kai laughs “I don’t even know what you look like.”

“Hasn’t your sister described me to you?”

“She has…but you know…I still have this self-made image of you in my head so-”

“I know what you’re talking about. I can’t really see you but I can build a picture of who you are in my head. When you’re blind, though, it’s more about the scents and the way someone touches rather than the image. You’re lucky to have seen your princess. I never really saw Tara.”

Bellamy doesn’t know what to say to that so he just lets the silence linger for a while as he remembers that in some ways, he’s still lucky. 

Kai will never know how Tara really looks like, he can touch her, but he won’t know. He has never seen his kids or their home. He only has a vague memory of what the village looked like when he was a child, before he went blind.

“You know Nyko is going to visit your skaikru after he’s done here?” Bellamy straightens at that.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. I hear the first bout of the flu already hit their camp so he’ll go give them a hand, show them some herbs and plants that would help battle it. Help them gather some and prepare for the rest of the winter.”

“Are they okay?”

“I don’t know. I only hear things here and there. But anyway, that’s not my point.”

“You had one?” that earns him a poke in the ribs and Bellamy huffs like an annoyed child.

“You mentioned it was her birthday this week. Why don’t you send a present through Nyko. That blue scarf you made last month? I know it was with the thought of her as you’ve already showered your sister with every ugly thing you’ve made since you came here.”

“I hate you.”

“No you don’t.”

Bellamy sighs and throws his hands in the air helplessly.

“I don’t know, Kai. What if she moved on, what if she found someone else? What if this only brings her more pain? I don’t want to do that to her.”

“We don’t have to say who is it from. It could just be a present from Trikru for her. You know it’s tradition to always bring something in when you’re visiting.”

“Since when do you care about my love life?”

“I don’t. But since she’s suffering enough already as it is, being stuck with your stupid face, then the least you could do is get her an ugly scarf too” Bellamy groans at that and leans on the wall feeling tired than usually.

Nobody told you that being blind meant you got tired faster, you lost your balance a lot more than you used to and your head hurt almost constantly. 

“But in all seriousness” the grounder keeps on and if Bellamy could, he would be rolling his eyes at him. 

Kai loved his speeches. Even Octavia said that he liked giving inspirational speeches more than Bellamy did when they first landed and that was saying something, to which Bellamy simply grunted and kept on brooding for a day after 

“For your body to act as you want it, your mind should too. All of it matters, Bellamy. How you feel-are you sad? Depressed? Lonely? Do you miss something?”

“I’m tired.” Bellamy admits finally and he hears Kai take a step forward again “I want to be better but I can’t fight back. I never win when we train. I keep falling and everything still hurts so much.”

“And those are the negative things. But look at the bright side-when you came here you couldn’t eat on your own. You stank like hell because you couldn’t shower and you could barely get yourself out of bed, isn’t that true?”

“It is.” 

Bellamy agrees but he’s never been good at admitting when he’s done good. He could never handle praise, not even when it came from Clarke.

“You got better with your hands, your hearing, you walk on your own, you’re even taking care of a dog and training it yourself.” Bellamy doesn’t say anything to that, he simply doesn’t know what to add.

“You’ve made progress and if you keep listening to me, you’ll get even better. By the time you return to your princess, you’ll be able to catch rabbits and cook them on your own and fight almost as good as your sister.” he huffs at that in disbelief but Kai slaps his hand and makes him listen.

“Now off to bed. That knee needs to rest and you can take the time off to practice on your dexterity. Maybe wrap that winter scarf in a nice package and all before Nyko leaves, okay?”

Bellamy sighs and carefully slips off the cot. Kai grabs his elbow and steadies him, giving him the stick he used as a cane before making sure he was stable enough on his own.

“Okay.” Bellamy agrees with a quiet nod that no one in the room could see. 

As he went home, exhausted, slowly limping towards his sister’s cabin, he hoped the scarf really wasn’t that ugly and tried to imagine what Clarke would look like wrapped in a comfortable blue wool in the middle of a snowy winter day.

In his head, she looked like an angel.

————————–

The grounders come in just after the first wave of the flu hits them, carrying more pelts, some smoked meat, a dozen chickens and most importantly herbs they could use as medicine. 

It’s not a big delegation-just Nyko, Indra, a bunch of warriors who protected them on the way home and Niylah who can explain more about how they would conserve the food in a way they could actually eat it when they need to.

Clarke hasn’t seen her in ages, since the last visit she paid her before coming back home after being away for three months and after all the talks for the day are through, Niylah comes to find her by the fire. 

Clarke is tired, most of all annoyed-she hasn’t slept normally in a week, dealing with patients day and night and passing out on one of the cots in medbay. 

She hasn’t even showered normally in days but she can’t find it in herself to care right now. 

The talks with Indra about going to TonDC to help with rebuilding the place in the spring time and teaching them how to use guns and radios, were exhausting but they had promised they’ll do it the same way the grounders had promised to help them survive the winter so as much as she disliked the idea of sending twenty people in grounder territory on their own in the spring, it had to be done.

She only wishes Bellamy was here to provide more insight on the matter. He would’ve been the first to volunteer to go with them if he still had his sight and then she’d worry even more, so for once she was glad he wasn’t home. 

“Let’s see if your people learned how to make a good moonshine” Niylah says with a smile and settles down near her, nursing two glasses. 

Clarke smiles politely and accepts the offer, taking a long sip from her glass.

“Long day?” Niylah eyes her curiously and Clarke shrugs.

“Long year.”

“Don’t worry. Once the winter passes, it will be easier on you. You’ll grow more crops next year, get more chicken, maybe a few goats. Trikru are generous if you honor your part of the deal.”

“And we will.” Clarke assures, not sure if this was Niylah snooping around to get information she could provide to Indra or if she was simply being friendly.

“Wanna go inside and join the celebrations with the rest of our people?” she asks and she seems genuine. 

Clarke takes another long sip from her drink but there’s another feeling inside her-something unsettling, something wrong, it’s been there since Niylah came by and smiled at her. 

Then she remembers Raven’s words from last week.

“You know you can still have fun, right? You’re not dating him. You can go around have reckless sex, kiss whoever you want, get drunk!” at which Clarke had scoffed. 

She had tried that once, after she recovered from her wound. 

The grounders were visiting again, this time with many more warriors and Raven had pushed her to a big bulky guy called Jerom. 

He had flirted with her all night, danced with her, brought her drinks, even covered her with one of his pelts that they’ve brought as presents. And she had let him, and it had made her feel nice, to be wanted, to receive attention.

But then when he dragged her to the corner and kissed her, she felt wrong. She still pushed herself to keep going, she kissed him back and closed her eyes, buried her fingers in his long curly hair, imagined it was Bellamy’s and almost gasped his name.

She had let his fingers roam under her shirt, touch her boobs, then fall down to her pants. She wanted to stop him when his fingers trailed even further but she didn’t-she had been so sad, so lonely, so damn broken and she was tired of it. 

_She wanted to feel good._

And for a while she did. He was good, he paid attention to her, asked her if it was fine for him to dig his fingers in her cunt and kept kissing her, telling her he liked her pretty blond hair.

But good wasn’t _right._

And she knew it. Even more so, she felt it, when whatever Jerom was giving her was just not enough for her. 

When at some point she opened her eyes and stared down at him she had realized this wasn’t who she wanted him to be, she pushed his hand away, mumbled a nervous “Sorry” and bolted outside.

She ran to her cabin, locked the door shut and covered herself under a pile of blankets, crying and trying to conjure up the image of a certain freckled curly hair guy with a black cloth wrapped around his blind eyes and a smirk that would just never leave his face. 

As she touched herself, trying to get herself where she needed to be, she imagined his rough fingers exploring her, in ways he never could before and that thing that brought her over the edge was the imagine of his body covering hers then pulling her to his chest after and whispering how much he loves her as they drift off.

“Hey, you okay?” she hears Niylah’s voice and her eyes snap open.

_“I don’t want you to wait around for me, okay? If you fall in love, if you…feel like leaving camp, if you want to travel the world and never come back, I want you to do it. Can you promise me you’ll do it?”_

His words echo in her head and she gives Niylah a small smile, takes the hand she reaches out to her and follows her inside. 

The main hall is a mess of drunk delinquents and dancing grounders, the talks consume the space even more than the music coming from the old speaker Raven has fashioned for special occasions like this and suddenly she feels overwhelmed even being here. 

She still lets Niylah drag her to the bar where they take a few shots of one very strong moonshine and then they join the dance floor. 

Clarke lets herself go crazy for a bit-she dances around, jumping to the music, following Niylah’s moves and having the time of her life. Or at least trying to.

“You’re on a roll tonight” the grounder tells her as she drags her away from all the people “I’ve never seen you this carefree before.”

“Yeah, I could be fun!” Clarke exclaims trying to outshout the music. 

She keeps jumping around and then Monty and Jasper join too and they make a mess of themselves when Raven carries in more shots on a tray. 

She drinks and dances and feels so light like she hasn’t been in months.

And then she starts swinging on her legs. 

Niylah comes to the rescue and Clarke feels drowsy, tired, she just wants to hit the bed honestly, but there’s a slow song going on and somehow her arms end up wrapped around Niylah’s neck and she lets her face rest on her shoulder and pretend it’s someone else’s. 

Niylah whispers something in her ear but Clarke barely makes out the words.

“Wanna get out?” she finally registers and nods. 

The air’s too stuffed in here, it’s so hot and she has sweated so much she has thrown her jacket somewhere she doesn’t even remember. 

She had many drunk nights after Bellamy was gone but tonight it feels like really fucked herself up.

Before she knows it, she’s outside, the fresh cold air hits her lungs and Niylah keeps talking but she can’t make much of anything.

“I-I-” Clarke stutters as she stumbles and almost falls on the cold snowy ground.

“I got you!” Niylah promises and steadies her up. She puts her hand on something cold and Clarke realizes she’s leaning on the Ark itself.

“You doing okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I just need a second.” 

“Alright.” Niylah smiles at her and helps her lean on the Ark.

Clarke takes a few breaths and shivers-she had nothing but a shirt underneath her jacket and she’s suddenly feeling way too cold. Niylah takes notice so she comes closer and takes off her heavy jacket made from animal fur around her arms. 

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” Clarke leans closer because she feels reckless and lonely and Niylah pulls her to her arms. They hug like this for a while and it feels nice until she feels Niylah’s lips on her neck. 

And that is awesome and makes her gasp and arch her back and God, for a moment there, she feels like she can actually indulge herself in this. She could let herself be loved by someone else, enjoy herself, experience something other than grief.

And then Niylah’s lips find hers.

And it just feels so wrong.

Clarke tries to kiss her back at first, tries to push away all the wrong thoughts, all the images of a boy with curly hair and brown eyes that couldn’t see anymore. 

She puts her hands on Niylah’s chest and pulls away.

“I’m sorry…I’m sorry-” she says her eyes filling with tears.

“Clarke,I-”

“I can’t, I’m sorry. I just can’t!” she says and runs away.

She doesn’t stop until she reaches her cabin, opening the door with a loud bang and closing it behind her with a thud, collapsing on the ground and crying, pouring all her soul out. 

She’s sad, she’s so damn sad. But she’s also angry as hell, she’s tired-why did this keep happening? 

He was gone! He left her! He might never come back! And here she was, still so damn pathetically hung up on him, crying, wishing her was here to talk to her, wrap her in her arms.

She cries and cries because it feels like all of this is so much for her to handle. It feels like facing the world tomorrow is not much worth it at all. 

She finds it hard to breathe and she has to dig her nails in her hands and count to a hundred before she could take a proper breath.

“I’m okay. I’m okay.” she whispers as she struggles to make her lungs comply “I’m fine, it’s all good.It’s alright.” and she can’t even count all the times she’s done that in the past months since he left-coming home, struggling to breathe and collapsing in bed or waking up in the middle of the night with a scream, needing to feel everything around her with her hands and count endlessly before she could calm down.

She cursed him sometimes. She got so mad, she wished he was here so she could yell at him, tell him he wasn’t fair, that he could’ve stayed, let her help, let them all help him. 

She’d sometimes imagine he was sitting on the chair near the table and she was yelling and yelling till her voice got raw about how unfair this world is and he’d simply sit there and take it because of course he believed he deserved it and she hated that he was like that too. 

“I’m okay.” she kept whispering to herself as she wiped the tears off her cheeks and stood up. 

The distance from the door to the room wasn’t long but she still took her time, her legs were shaky and she was still shivering, having thrown Niylah’s jacket off somewhere on the way home.

She went through the motions-lit the candles, started the fire, put some tea to brew so she would calm down a bit and then slowly, with a warm cup in hand, she dragged herself to her poor miserable full of blankets and pelts cot.

And there she found a few packages she has totally forgotten about. 

When the grounders came in today, Indra gave her a bunch of stuff “Just for you, Wanheda” to which Clarke had raised her eyebrow and Indra had shrugged.

“Presents. Gifts. I heard you had your day of birth recently.” which really made Clarke even more confused because who even told her she had a birthday last week? 

Must’ve been Kane or someone letting it slip by but Clarke really shrugged it off because whenever the grounders came they always brought her something as a gift, it was part of their culture, so she had taken the packages and dropped them here, without much thought.

Something makes her open up the smallest one and she finds a leather bound book which she could use for drawing. Then she unwraps a really nice pocket knife that she tries out and figures she could easily hide in her boot and then she grabs the last one.

The paper it’s wrapped in is different, somehow heavier and when she carefully pulls at it away she finds a beautiful heavy blue winter scarf. 

It makes her gasp. 

She’s never had anything like this and the blue is the exact same match as her eyes. It’s also a color she’s very fond of because it reminded her of this shirt her father had when she was little, she remembers telling Bellamy all about that one night by the fire in the early dropship days.

She smiles as she wraps it around her neck and when the material gets stuck around her mouth, she breaths it in and freezes.

It smelled like Bellamy.

No. No that wasn’t possible.

She unwraps it, takes a good look at it, even goes by the fire trying to get as much light as she could, desperate for some kind of sign that she’s not going insane.

And she sees it-it’s hand-knitted, that’s for sure, but there are a few minor mistakes here and there-a small hole on the bottom left side, an untied end on the upper right corner-barely visible really, she would probably not notice them at all were she not looking for them. 

It was so well made and the material was so soft that when she pressed it to her face and breathed it in again, she felt like she was being hugged by Bellamy.

“I’m going insane.” she whispered to herself. She pulled it away looked at it, then pressed it to her nose again, then repeated it a few times.

But she couldn’t be wrong-there was this familiar Bellamy scent, the one that he carried around with him everywhere-of chopped woods and cold wind, green grass and forest, even a little bit of smoke when he had stood by the fire too long or even tried to smoke pipe with Jasper which he did only on the nights he was really sad and had a lot going on his mind.

She rushes back to the package, looking for something, anything and as she turns her bed upside down, a small note falls on the ground.

Frantically, she picks it up and finds a simple message.

_Happy birthday, princess._

It wasn’t his handwriting. He used big block letters. She had always suspected that he is near sighted even before he lost his sight and that he probably needed glasses, finding him with his nose literally stuck in a book because he couldn’t make out the words but always pretended to be fine.

The letters were small, scratchy, in a more cursive style rather than Bellamy’s big bulky letters and she quickly concluded it must be Octavia’s handwriting.

Of course he couldn’t write, he couldn’t see anymore, but it must be him right? She wasn’t imagining this. A winter scarf in her favorite color that only he knew about and a note with the word princess…It had to be him.

She smiles, feels herself tear up again but this time for all the right reasons.

She wraps her scarf around her neck and lays down in her cot, staring at the ceiling and feeling for the first time in forever, hopeful.

———————————————-

_He knows he’s technically dreaming because his every day life could never look as sunny and warm as this was._

_He’s in the middle of their camp and he’s looking at everything with his own two eyes-he’s not blind._

_Somehow he feels giddy, happy and his mouth stretches in a smile._

_This was good-they’ve build so many cabins, somehow, he doesn’t really know why, but he knows that he was part of it, that he helped them and when he looks down at his hands, he knows it’s true-there are more bruises and cuts than before, he also feels broader, stronger, he has gained some weight and he feels right like he hadn’t in months._

_He looks around again-it’s a bright spring morning._

_He doesn’t know why it is spring but it’s just how it is. It reminds him of the day he left her behind._

_It all smells the same-the grass that is just now starting to grow, the trees all around him,blooming._

_There are even a few tulips and what Monty called roses near the Ark’s main gate. He had noticed Clarke fancied the lilacs most but they grew outside the gates and he’d sometimes go before she woke up, gather a bunch and wake her up in his teasing rebel Bellamy manner where he pulled the tarp of her tent, yelled “Wakey, wakey, princess! Its a bright new day!”, shove the flowers in her nose and watch as she annoyingly tried to hide under the blanket and kick him just to get back at him._

_But he had no flowers now. It was just him in the middle of camp. And there was no one else around him._

_He should head to her tent, find her and help her up. Maybe he could pick her in his arms and carry her outside, watch her nose scrunch up when the sun rays touched her face and laugh because her hair was spilling all over him and she was yet the most annoyed and the most beautiful thing on this earth._

_“Bellamy!” he hears her voice and the minute he does, he knows something’s wrong._

_He turns around and finds her there just a few feet from him but she doesn’t look like the sun now and the weather around them changes suddenly-the sun is gone and the sky is grey, there’s a strong wind now too that somehow makes it harder for him to breathe._

_But that’s not what makes his heart skip a beat._

_It’s her, standing there all slumped-her left hand is holding her right side and he can see a bloody spot there that seems to be growing by the second, but he catches no sight of an actual wound._

_Her face is full of cuts and bruises and her eyes are barely opened. Her hair falls down her shoulders but its messy and dirty and he barely makes out the familiar blond color. She seems like she’s on the verge of collapsing and when she takes a step forward, he rushes to catch her._

_“Clarke!” she leans heavily on him, her face gets buried in his chest and she cries out painfully._

_“Bell-” she whispers as his hands roam her body, pull her away from him for a second, trying to find a wound but even when her hand falls from her side that she was holding just a few minutes ago, he sees nothing._

_“What’s wrong? Where are you hurt?” he asks and she opens her mouth to answer but feet buckle and he barely manages to steady her before she falls down hard._

_“Clarke, come on,please. Please, get up!” he begs and kneels down, wrapping his arm on her back and cradling her body closer to him._

_He puts his other hand under her knees and presses her to his chest just like he used to do before when she was too tired to walk and he carried her home. “Clarke, hey, hey!” he carefully pats her cheek and her eyes open._

_“Bellamy-” for a moment he thinks she doesn’t recognize him but then there’s a light in her eyes and she smiles reaching her hand to cup his cheek “I miss you.” she says and the way she does makes his heart clench and his eyes fill with tears._

_“Hey, hey, I’m here alright? Tell me what hurts so I can fix it? Who did this to you?” he asks again and his free hand frantically peppers all over her body, searching for an actual wound but never really finding one._

_“You did.” she says just barely audible and he stops, his head snapping back to her. He expects her to be angry, to be accusing, like he usually sees her in his head, but this time she’s sad._

_There’s this awfully painful smile on her face, like he did this to her, but it’s okay, she took it and she keeps taking it, because she loves him, and even if it will never be the same again, she could do it._

_She was strong enough to keep going no matter how much he hurt her._

_“Clarke I-” he stutters, cups her cheek and tilts her head to him so her eyes can meet his “I’m so sorry.” he cries “I’m so, so sorry!”_

_“Please,come home.” she begs when he leans down so close that their noses touch and he breaths in her scent “I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this.”_

_“I-I’m not done yet.”_

_“Please.” she begs again and he sees his own tears fall down her face._

_She leans down and kisses her but suddenly he feels like he can’t breathe and something harsh and cold is falling over him._

He wakes up with a start and finds Octavia leaning over him with an empty glass of water. He sits up and his hand moves up his face and down to his chest.

“I’m so sorry! I couldn’t wake you up!” Octavia explains as he struggles to breathe, he somehow can’t take a proper breath and his lungs hurt, his whole chest does. “I tried shaking you, I even kicked you once but you wouldn’t come back.”

“I can’t- I can’t breathe” he manages and Octavia throws the bucket away and helps him sit up. 

She comes behind him and sits on his cot, pulling his back to her chest, wrapping herself around him like a monkey. She locks her bony hands over his chest and closes her legs by the ankle over his.

“Come on, count with me” she suggests but he shakes his head, he can’t get rid of the image of Clarke in his arms, all bloodied and bruised, begging him to come home. 

It’s been two months since he send her the present, the worst of the winter was almost over and the village was anxiously waiting for January-the last and worst of the cold months, to come and go so they could all breathe a little easier.

He kept wondering what’s going on with Clarke, if the camp and the kids were okay, if she was eating enough, getting enough rest? Did she have her own cabin now? Was she sharing it with someone?

He tried to push all those thoughts away as he trained with Kai. He’s been getting better and better and has made great progress especially in the last few weeks. 

His fighting technique and all the lessons Kai had given him were finally proving to be of use and he was feeling almost optimistic at this point. 

And then nights like this happened and he felt like he was right back where he started.

He struggled the breathe and felt Octavia taking his hand and putting it over his fast beating heart.

“Come on, big brother, just breathe with me, come on!” she whispers and he tries to comply. “In and out, just like this” he feels his heart beat so fast it felt like bursting but he follows Octavia’s lead and after a while he can feel himself breathing easily, his chest no longer hurts like before but he’s still crying-the tears have soaked the bandage covering his eyes and he feels Octavia tug it away.

“No, no, don’t!” he asks and reaches behind to stop her. He feels embarrassed, naked and he knows he shouldn’t be but he can’t help himself.

“Okay, okay, I’m leaving it.” O promises and then leans on the bed board, pulling him closer to her chest again. 

He lays his head on her chest and feels her bury her fingers in his hair, running them in a soothing manner, trying to help ground him.

Suddenly, he feels overwhelmed again-here he is, in the middle of the night, waking his sister up with his screams, keeping her away from the person she loves.

The thought makes him disgusted with himself and he pulls away, sitting up and swinging his legs off the cot.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asks, grabbing his elbow and he shrugs her off, he’s actually strong enough to do that now.

“I need some fresh air, go to bed, alright?” he grabs his stick from the places he last put it-leaning on the drawer and stands up with a swing.

“Bellamy, come back to bed!”

“I’m fine! I can take a walk. I need to clear my head. Go back to Lincoln.”

“No!” he feels her jump off and stand in his way, her hand on his chest “Stop this! Stop trying to push me away!”

“I’m not, Octavia.”

“Yes, you are! You are! I know you were screaming Clarke’s name. I know you feel horrible and I know you’re in pain and everything is so goddamn screwed up, but you can’t just up and leave in the middle of the night in the fucking winter, brother!”

“I said I’ll be fine! Just trust me! I’m not as helpless as I was before.”

“Oh yeah, then where are your boots?”

“On the second shelf by the door, right above Lincoln’s.” he replies and he sounds a little too smug even for her liking. “And my jacket’s hanging on the right, near your awfully smelling panther pelt. I’ll just take a quick walk and come back, I promise.” she sighs, she can’t really fight him here.

“You’re shaking.”

“I’ll be fine.” he reaches and finds her shoulder with ease, squeezing it gently “Go to bed.”

Octavia sighs and stands on her toes, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek and heading to her and Lincoln’s bedroom. 

For a moment he stays there all alone, in the middle of his room, feeling like the weight of the world was pressing him down harder and harder.

Afraid that he’d have another panic attack, he heads to the door, puts on his boots without tying them up and throws his jacket over his shoulders before whistling quietly for Ares who was sleeping by the fire. 

“You feeling up for a walk, buddy?” he rubs his head and Ares licks his fingers in agreement. 

He liked being outside, fancying the winter way more than the horrible summer heat, just like Bellamy. 

They were truly a match and the more time they spent together, the more Bellamy taught Ares new things and the more the dog was helping him out with everything. 

He truly found his best friend in Ares. Well…his second best friend. Clarke always took up the first place.

They head outside and he finds his favorite spot on the edge of the village quite fast. 

There was this log he used to sit on and so he brushed the snow away from it and settled down. Ares curled up near his feet, feeling his anxiety and stayed close, trying to keep him warm. 

It was cold but not too cold and he let his lungs get filled with the winter air. 

He tried thinking back of happier times. Times when he and Clarke were stupid idiots who couldn’t admit their feelings but still took road trips to grounder villages or went by the river to wash their clothes.

He stayed like this for a while, buried in his own head until he felt the cold chill his bones so badly, he was starting to doze off and that was dangerous. Ares sensed his fear and perked up nudging his hand with his nuzzle until finally Bellamy got up and headed back home.

He should’ve been tired, should’ve headed straight to bed, but instead he sat by the fire with a piece of wood and started carving a horse figure with the thought of his sister in mind.

He’s noticed something about her was different lately. She and Lincoln talked in hushed voices all the time and she was off, being more annoyed and eating less which had worried him at first.

Until he started figuring out that she was probably pregnant.

It wasn’t until she asked him if he could spend the night at Kai’s last week before he was certain. 

She probably confirmed it then and wanted to share the news with Lincoln. The next morning he had found them having breakfast in bed together, which was a rarity because of their busy schedules and when he asked what was up, Lincoln’s voice was way too cheerful and Octavia, he could tell, was smiling, even if she was trying to downplay it.

Tonight when she had pressed his back to her stomach he had felt a something there, a barely noticeable bump, but he knew it wasn’t there before, hadn’t felt it when she hugged him just last month and he had grown more and more observant since he went blind, so he trusted his gut.

She was pregnant.

Lincoln’s newly found interest in carpentry this past week also suggested he was on the right path and he knew, he felt it in his guts, it was time to get off of their hair. 

The truth is, they had taken him in happily but he knew…he knew he was a burden to them as much as Octavia kept repeating that she loves having him here. 

She was worried, he understood that. If it was her, he’d never leave her side again, but he was doing better now, he could do almost everything on his own, thanks to Kai. 

He even knew how and where to put a trap so he could catch a rabbit and he could fish with bare hands. Well..almost. He was still perfecting that one out, but the point is that if he left when the worst of the winter was over, he’d find his way home on his own. 

He knew how to track and with Ares there, he’d be able to keep north and come home in two weeks. Three, if he messed something up or if there was too much snow and he had to hide.

Octavia loved him, but she had her own life now. She had Lincoln by her side and he loved her dearly. As much as Bellamy was against that at first, he realized it only now, how real and true the foundation of their relationship was. It was ironic he only “saw” this after he got blind but life was tricky that way.

And now with a baby on the way…there was no place for him here. The cabin was small, they’ll need his room for a nursery and they had to start preparing. 

What happened tonight couldn’t be part of her life anymore. She couldn’t take care of his fucked up self, it wasn’t her job. He could handle it on his own.

He keeps carving till the rooster announces the break of dawn and even though he should be exhausted from the lack of sleep, he feels strangely energetic. He cleans his face and washes up his chest before getting dressed for training with Kai.

“You smell like you got less than two hours of sleep” Kai huffs when he hears him enter the training quarters. 

Bellamy preferred it when they were outside but the snow was too much and the weather was too cold for them to stay out for hours so Bellamy had to settle for this. 

“Bad night?”

“I’m alright.” Bellamy says calmly and he can feel Kai is surprised by the tone of his voice but says nothing.

“Let’s get to it, shall we?”

“Sure” Bellamy agrees with ease and shrugs off his jacket.

He gets lost in it, he loved that about training with Kai. All his troubles went away and he just tried to listen to his body and remember Kai’s lessons about blocking and attacking.

He’s almost sweated through his shirt when Kai hits his right side and he swings violently. The grounder knew this was his weak side because of his knee and he attacked there every day to see when Bellamy would push trough and keep himself on his feet.

He almost falls.

But then he doesn’t. 

He clenches his jaw and uses his stick to support himself instead of attack. He ducks when Kai swings once more and manages to kick him in the ankle. 

The grounder loses his balance but just barely and it’s enough for Bellamy to get back to his feet and swing his stick. He trips him on his back using his own trick-a hit in the shoulder, then the stomach, then a big swing under his legs.

Kai falls with a thud and Bellamy smiles. It was the first time he did this and he feels his heart beat out of his chest.

Kai is struggling to breathe on the ground and Bellamy reaches his hand to him.

“Oh, don’t be so smug!” he huffs as he sits up, knowing that Bellamy was beaming right now “I can basically draw the smirk on your face right now and I’m blind as hell.”

Bellamy laughs and pulls him up.

“You’re just angry that I finally got the best of you.”

“The best?” the grounder laughs but squeezes his shoulder “No, no way. But Bellamy-” he takes in a deep breath and Bellamy freezes under his grip “You’re almost ready.”  
\-----------------------------  
He argues with Kai for another month before he leaves and Octavia is more pissed off than she’s ever been.

“It’s the middle of the fucking winter, brother!” his sister raises her voice in desperation and Bellamy can imagine Kai rubbing his forehead in the background of Octavia’s living room quarters, leaning on the wall near the fireplace-he always liked being warm while Bellamy, ever since the accident, couldn’t get rid of the burning smell in his nose and ran away from the fire like the plague.

“Octavia, I’ll take it slowly.”

“What’s your plan here exactly, Blake” Kai joins in too and Bellamy can’t really figure out why he is arguing with him right now when he was the one who said Bellamy was ready “You’ll walk all the way back to your camp with what? Your dog and a big backpack?”

“Pretty much, yes.”

“This is insanity! Kai-tell him! There are still storms going on outside, you could lose your way, you could get sick and trapped somewhere and die in the middle of fucking nowhere and no one will find out about it at all!”

“There’s no need to be dramatic now, O.”

“Your sister’s right.”

“Oh my God, not you too!”

“Yes, me too, you ass! I know you’re good at doing things on your own now, I taught you as much but the weather alone can prove to be a big problem and leaving that aside, there’s still not enough game for you to catch-the rivers are frozen and the rabbits are still in their holes. What the hell will you do?”

“I need about a week and a half to get there. I’ll store up on food and ration. God knows I have been doing it all my life!”

“And if you lose your way? If it takes more?”

“That-” Octavia chimes in again “And why the fuck are we ignoring the elephant in the room. This is about Clarke, but Bellamy, if she waited that long, she could surely wait another month.”

“No!” at that he stands up abruptly and fists his stick “No, this is not about Clarke. Or at least not entirely about her. You said I am ready.” he turns to Kai “I knocked you on your ass three times yesterday. I know how to catch rabbits and squirrels and fish. If I get lost, Ares will help me. If the weather’s too cold, I’ll make a fire, hide in a cave, wait the storm out for a few days before it’s safe to go back on the road.”

“This is bullshit.” Octavia exclaims.

“No, it’s not! I know there are a million things that could go wrong, O, but I have to do this. Not for Clarke or the kids or anyone else. For me. This is how it is supposed to be.”

Silence falls upon them and he can hear Octavia pull up a chair and sit down tiredly while Kai sighs and paces behind her, still near the fireplace.

“You’re one stubborn son of a bitch, you know that right?”

Bellamy smiles.

“I do.”

“You’re doing this on one condition.” Octavia says sternly and in that moment he can imagine their mother, being all mad and angry that he got in a fight at school or that he tripped over and tore his only pair of jeans or that he was reading the Iliad in the middle of the night instead of sleeping and his heart warms-his sister would make an amazing mother one day and he couldn’t wait to be there for it all. 

He couldn’t see it, but he knew it. He knew it in his heart-she’d kick ass as a parent. 

“I want the radio with you at all times and I want you checking in twice a day. If you skip even once, I’m going to raise half this village and come find you and drag your ass back here and you can forget about going home to your princess, alright?”

“Okay.”

“For the record after she’s done kicking your ass, it’s my turn, Blake.” Kai adds and Bellamy laughs.

“Good. You can both kick me as much as you want if I do something stupid.” and he meant it as a joke but deep down he was afraid too. 

He thought that if he fails to make it home, then he won’t come back here. He just couldn’t. 

If he gets stuck or unable to find the right way, if he gets sick or too cold that he passes out in the middle of nowhere, then he stays there. And he dies. 

This was all part of the journey he began all those months ago when he left Clarke and if he couldn’t make it back to her, to them, then none of it meant anything. He wasn’t worth all this fight, all these efforts by his sister, Kai, even himself.

Kai scolds him for a while more before he finally leaves and when it’s just him and Octavia, she comes by and hugs him really tight, wraps her arms around him and leans on his chest like she did when she was little and beg without words, that he pulled her up to his chest and told her a story.

“Bellamy, are you sure?”

“I am”

“What’s the rush? You could stay another month, two…even a year. There’s so much more to do and learn here instead of being stuck in that metal box in our camp.”

He kisses the top of her head and strokes her back.

“That can is my home. The kids are there and Clarke’s there and they need me. I know this is your place now and it should be just yours and Lincoln’s.” he adds and when she pulls away and is about to protest he slides his hand down to the small bump on her stomach and adds “Especially now.”

“You…know?”

“Of course I know. I’m blind, not stupid. Or did you forget who was there when mom was pregnant with you?”

“But…how long have you known? You didn’t say anything? Why?” he shrugs and smiles as his hand flies up to cup her cheek. She’s gained some weight and he can only be happy about that especially with the current condition she was in.

“About a month or so. And I didn’t want to say anything because I was hoping you would, but I understand why you didn’t.”

“No, Bell, this has nothing to do with you!” she hurries to reassure, gripping his wrist tightly, sensing that he’s about to lose himself in all the wrong thoughts “I was…I am just scared.”

“You will be okay. You’ll make a wonderful mother, O. And you got Lincoln, the guy’s basically wrapped around your little finger. If that little one is a girl, he’s fucked! I do not envy him.”

She laughs and he feels the tears coming down her cheeks so he hurries to brush them away and pull her head back to his chest.

“How are you so certain?”

“Because I know you and I am sure you’ll give this kid the best life possible.”

“I also want them to know you. Bellamy-” she pulls away and he can feel her looking up at him “you should stay.”

“No.” he shakes his head “You have a family now, O. And I will always be part of it too, but it’s time I went my way.” she sighs. “I hope you can understand.”

“I do but Bellamy…I don’t want you to think of yourself as broken. I don’t want you to go on this suicide mission just because you feel like you need to.”

“I’m not. I promise that I’m not.” he rubs her arms up and down and tries to keep up his smile “It’s just time, O.” she sighs and nods against his chest and he knows in that moment, that he has won the fight.

He was going home.


	7. Nine months

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Alright! So here we are at the reunion chapter! I am warning that there's lots of angst here so please keep that in mind! There is one more chapter after this one and then an epilogue. 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @jasperjoordan!

She wakes up from the breach alarm ringing off as if they were all dying. They had installed it a few months ago after Raven figured out how to hot wire the fence but also connect the Ark alarm to the gates so that if the guards needed to send a signal for immediate danger, they could.

It has only gone off a few times so far, mostly by accident, when some of the younger cadets thought that a herd of deer in the distance looked like people riding on horses and approaching rapidly to destroy camp or when a child, no older than three year old, accidentally pushed the button because “It was bwight and wed!” little Kevin had told Clarke who almost died when she saw how adorable he was trying to explain his mistake in the middle of a freaked out camp with his dad guiltily holding him in his arms.

But it was late now. 

Or more like…early. She glanced at the clock, it was five am, the night was pulling away and the cold winter sun, if there was any, would make its way through the window of her cabin. 

She sat up in bed all confused, rubbing her forehead and trying to bring herself back to life. 

She hadn’t slept normally in a week and she was craving having her two days off to catch up on it and maybe do something just for the fun of it with Raven and the kids. 

The alarm kept on going so loudly she had to grip her head with her own hands before she heard the voices coming from outside. 

Slowly, without really knowing what she was doing (she was that tired), she put on her pants and threw on a jacket over the shirt she slept with (one that belonged to Bellamy, she found out randomly one day when she was cleaning and she loved it). 

She slept with the blue scarf wrapped around her shoulders at night because it still smelled like him, but now she pushed it to her neck and somehow managed to put on her boots before going out.

The sun was just about to rise but it was a chilly February morning, the snow crunching under her sounding as broken and hallow as she was.

“The hell is going on?” she hears Raven’s voice and sees her limping down the stairs of her porch, throwing her a curious look in the meantime. 

Clarke shrugs, too grumpy to talk now. 

They all knew not to bother her that early in the morning and yet half the camp was peaking from the windows or yelling at the gates to shut the damn thing off before locking their doors again and trying to go back t sleep.

“Dear God, turn it off!” Clarke raises her voice as she approaches the gates and finds Kane strolling to her “What’s wrong? Are we being attacked?”

“Two of the guards found someone in the woods. Radioed that he tried to fight them and are bringing him in for interrogation.”

“Grounder?” Miller joins in as well, coming from behind Clarke who’s still hunched over and half asleep. 

“I have no idea.” Kane shrugs “Probably”

“That doesn’t make sense. We’ve been in peace for a year now. Why would someone attack?”

“I don’t think it’s an attack. Could be just a spy or something.” Kane explains as the gates behind them open and Clarke sees two guards dragging in a big broad figure in between them as he struggles against them.

She gasps.

There’s a bag over his head and he’s dressed in grounder clothes but something about him is familiar.

She pushes Raven and Miller away and rushes forward.

There’s a commotion going on. 

The guards, two of the younger cadets who seemed way too happy with the situation for their being, which Clarke think they were waiting for a moment like this where they could capture a grounder and be praised by the council, were way too cruel with the prisoner.

Except it’s not a prisoner.

She freezes. Now that she’s closer to him, she knows. 

_She just knows it._

But there’s too much going on.

He’s struggling against them, fighting them at every step. 

There’s a limp in his left leg, and a dog that looks more like wolf, barking behind them all that everyone else seem to fear. He must be gagged because she can’t make out words but he’s groaning, fighting and it makes her smile as her eyes fill with tears.

“What are you doing? Take it easy!” Kane scolds and rushes by her but she grabs his elbow.

“Stop.” she whispers to him and he gives her a curious look “Stop! Let him go!” she raises her voice now.

The guards still, looking at her confused but dropping the prisoner between them and he falls hard on his knees but keeps trying to free his hands. The dog which looks more like a wolf keeps barking loudly and the boys wave their shock batons to keep him away.

“We found him in the west woods, sleeping in a shelter under a tree. He must’ve been spying on us for a while.” one of the cadets says proudly as he steps forward to report to Kane.

“You’re idiots!” Clarke scolds and moves forward but Kane blocks her way. 

The prisoner keeps struggling and manages to kick the other boy in the knee and trip him over which only causes more commotion and yelling and even a shock baton being used against him which in turn makes Clarke shout and the prisoner falling to the ground in the damn cold snow, and curling up on himself, whimpering quietly.

“Wait, Clarke, he can be dangerous!” Miller intervenes too, worriedly putting his arm before her.

“He’s not dangerous!” she cries out and kneels next to him _“It’s Bellamy!”_

She pulls the bag off of his head and finds his familiar face which makes her heart skip a beat. Quickly she unties his hands, removes the gag from his mouth and slowly he tries to sit up.

“Knew you’d be the one to save my ass, princess.” he whispers as he leans forward heavily into her, looking too tired and in pain after the shock lashing. He seemed so much different and yet just the same. 

Her hand instinctively moves up to cup his cheek. 

There’s a bruise there and it’s fresh, probably courtesy of the young cadets but he smiles and leans into her. He seems a bit pale and when he tries to speak up again, he coughs in and leans in closer to her.

She pulls him to her chest and breaths him in, burying her hand in his hair and holding him tight. She closes her eyes and for the first time in nine months, she feels relieved. 

“Bellamy” she says and it’s the only thing she can say, it’s like she loses all ability to speak all of a sudden. 

His arms wrap tightly around her and she feels herself nuzzle in his shoulder, bury herself deeper in him, like she always did before.

“I’m home, princess.” he says in her ear, his warm breath tingling her and she smiles. “I came home.” he adds and keeps closer to her until a cough interrupts them and she pulls away, taking a good look at him.

Her hands roam all over, his face, his forehead, then his arms and she pays attention to the fact that he’s dressed in grounder clothes-a few pelts over his old Ark jacket and he seemed like he was in desperate need of sleep.

The dog, the one who kept barking the hell out of themselves comes by jumping all over him, licking his face, as relieved as Clarke is, that he’s fine, whole and she immediately likes it.

“Ares, down boy. Down! I’m okay.” Bellamy orders and his head moves up as if he’s trying to determine who else is here.

“I’m sorry if we scared you. I didn’t expect our guards to be that far into our territory. I was waiting for the night to pass before I came home. Didn’t want to cause any trouble. Though I obviously did.” 

Ares kept licking his hands, probably looking for treats and Bellamy reached for the bag hanging from his shoulder and dug in to throw something at him which looked a lot like cold jerky.

“Well you surely know how to make an entrance, Blake.”

“Miller?” Bellamy smiles, his head snapping in Miller’s direction. 

His friend comes by and helps him get back on his feet. Bellamy sways a bit, but steadies himself and tries to get a hold of his surroundings.

“He always was the drama queen.” Raven adds and comes to his other side, snapping her hand on his shoulder “Welcome home, Bellamy. It’s good to have you here.”

“It’s good to be back” he smiles and somehow his voice sound deeper to her, like he measures every word carefully, but also tries to understand the meaning behind them, as he could not see. 

The black bandage wrapped over his eyes was still there and the weight that he had lost…it seemed he mostly made up for it. There was a big back pack he was carrying and when she finally took a good look at him she furrowed her eyebrows.

“How did you get here?” she asks and his head turns back to her. It’s like he knew exactly where she stood and could see her.

“I walked.” he states simply, looking for something to hold on to and she only now notices that he doesn’t have his stick. 

He must’ve lost it when the cadets took him in by surprise and he seemed like he has completely lost his way.

His dog senses it, though, because it comes by his left side, the weak one and presses his body to Bellamy’s, as if helping him keep upright.

“You what?” Miller asks confused.

“I walked. For two weeks give or take. Got lost that one time and then there was this snow storm so I had to hide in a cave but I knew I was close a few days ago when I reached the river and started going up north.”

“You walked?” Raven asks even more surprised than Miller was “All on your own?”

“Yeah, I can do that now.” Bellamy says with a light laugh which causes him to cough. 

He might’ve made it proudly here but he looked like shit. Her gaze falls to his boots which seem soaked and that cough he keeps around was not from having the most pleasant journey home.

“Where’s Octavia?” Clarke asks next and she can’t figure out why all of a sudden she feels mad at him. 

The damn idiot. He’s blind, he barely manages, and he walked all the way from the western Trikru boarder back to camp with nothing but a heavy backpack and a dog to keep him company.

“Home. She has other things to care about now.”

“What other things?” she hates that she sounds so angry so she takes a step away from him as if she’s afraid she might burst if she comes closer. 

She doesn’t get it. He was finally home. Her hopes and dreams of seeing him again were coming through.

And she was mad as hell.

“I don’t think it’s time to discuss that now. Maybe I can settle in somewhere at first? That old place I used for my tent near the south gates? If it’s still there?”

“There’s a cabin there now. We built new homes.” Miller explains patiently, he seems happy to have his friend home and Clarke’s heart clenches again in confusion as to why she wants to hug Bellamy one minute and then yell at him the next. 

Bellamy grows sullen, gives Miller a curt nod and clears his throat.

“I see. Then maybe you can guide me to some free spot somewhere? Then I’ll take a walk and try to remember where everything is.”

“You need to come to medbay first.” Clarke announces cutting them all off in the middle of conversation. He furrows his eyebrows in confusion and turns his head to her again.

How did he damn know where she was? He never used to do that before.

“Why? I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. I need to check on that cough and you look like you’re barely standing on your feet.”

“I’m fine, Clarke.” he tries to promise with a weak smile which she doesn’t believe for a second.”I’m not as weak as I was before.”

“Even so-” she cuts him off “We need to make sure whatever you have is not contagious. We just went through the worst of the flu and I can’t have you going around getting others sick, alright?”

He seems taken aback by that so he just nods, shrinks somehow deeper in his pelts and jacket and when Ares looks up at him and gives him a bark he quiets him down with a scratch behind the ears.

“You’re right.” he agrees but there’s hurt in his voice. “Can he come with me too? He gets restless when we’re away and he would probably keep barking, waking the rest of the camp.”

“Sure.” she swallows hard as she avoids Raven and Miller’s pointing glances. 

Her friend is smirking in the bad teasing way, like she knows that Clarke wants to be alone with him but isn’t sure how to approach it and Miller seems confused at her animosity. 

She is too. 

Never in her wildest dreams did she think she’d feel so messed up when he finally came home. 

“Can you follow me on your own or do you need help?”

“We can follow you. Just tell me left or right and how many feet till we reach the building.” he promises and there’s another blow. 

“We” can follow you. Of course he means he and the dog. God, she can’t be jealous of a dog now, can she? This is insane.

“Left. About ten feet from here. There’s nothing in between.” she states and watches as he barely touches Ares’ head, whistles quietly and follow her.

“The old smoak house was there.”

“Yeah, now it’s bigger and located near the main hall. We build it all from scratch, everything all on our own.”

He nods, slowly trailing behind her. 

“I’ll show you around later.”

“It’ll take me a few days to remember everything but I’ll figure it out, thanks.”

She pays attention to him now-he’s slow, still dragging his left leg a bit, but he’s moving with purpose and without fear. 

Before after the accident, he’d always look for her hand, reach out, try to grab on something so he could steady himself, so he knew where he was headed, but now that was no longer the case. 

He moved easily, lightly, even with all the burden on his shoulders-both literal and metaphorical and the dog was surely helping a lot as well. 

Even through the walk, he kept his body pressed to Bellamy’s legs so that every time he staggered even a bit, he was there to support him and help him lead. 

Ares was also observing Clarke and where she was headed, following her reluctantly, but making sure that his master was okay. 

He nudged Bellamy’s knee when there was something on the way-a bigger rock, a stack of woods, anything and Bellamy followed his lead. 

“Smart one, isn’t he?” Bellamy speaks, breaking the silence, knowing that she’s keeping an eye on him. “I wouldn’t have made it here without him.”

“You’re insane coming home like this-all on your own in the middle of the winter.” he ignores the anger in her voice and shrugs.

“Octavia was against it too. So was Kai. But I convinced them it was time.”

“They weren’t wrong.” she spits out before she could help herself and immediately regrets it because his face falls at her words and his head lolls down.

“Why did you come home _now?_ ” she opens the door to the mostly empty medbay and he carefully follows her inside. 

“It was time.” he replies and smiles but it’s too much for her to handle so she just keeps walking to the nearest bed.

“It was, huh?” she hates that she sounds like that “The cot is on the left…you need to take just like five steps.” he nods and follows slowly, his hand reached out in the air till he found it and carefully sat up.

“Ares, sit!” he orders down and the dog listens, ears still perked, eyeing Clarke with curiosity she hasn’t seen in many animals before.

She reaches out to take off his jacket but his hands are already on the zipper and she wants to mentally slap herself.

“I got it.” he says carefully trying to dismiss the awkward situation of their hands barely touching and the electricity making her pull away. This was dangerous, she thought, she had no idea what was happening “I can do those things on my own now.”

“I see.” she slips on a pair of gloves, not because she thinks she really needs to but her touching him in any direct way was a bad idea. 

She didn’t know what would happen-if it would just get more awkward or the opposite, if she’ll do something stupid, like let herself linger too much and throw herself in his arms again like before. 

She watches him take off the pelts and strip himself off his jacket, placing them carefully beside him.

“I’ll need you to take off the shirt too.” he chuckles at that and her cheeks get red,not that he could see it.

“Of course you do.”

This is okay. 

Banter, she could handle but when she presses the stethoscope to his chest and makes him breathe in and out her anger comes back all over. 

He’s freezing-literally. The familiar Bellamy furnace heat was gone and he was even slightly shivering which made her angry all over. 

There were a few new scars and bruises she had not seen before. She knows because she’s been trying to remember everything about him late at night when she closed her eyes and wished he was right there with her.

“You slept in a tent?”

“Yeah.” he says, his voice hoarse, before another cough interrupts him. “Ares kept me warm, but I also made fire.”

“It’s the middle of the fucking winter, Bellamy, no fire can be big enough to keep you warm throughout the night.” he tenses, his brows furrowing as she checks on a cut on his arm and the most bruised places. 

Thankfully nothing’s broken and she lets herself breathe. 

“What you did was stupid.”

“Yeah, well you know me, I tend to be reckless.” he tries to turn it into a joke but it doesn’t land, not this time and he senses it by the lack of response. 

She fiddles with something-was it pills or something else, he can’t tell, but her gestures are fast, curt and angry, at least by the sound of it. 

“Clarke?” he asks carefully but still no answer. 

He reaches out to look for her hand but instead she grabs his and turns it over, dabbing cotton over his veins.

“Oh, shit. Please, don’t give me a shot.”

“Don’t be a baby. You traveled for two weeks in the middle of the winter, I am pretty sure you can handle an injection.” he tries to pull his hand away but she holds him still. 

He’s always hated shots, ever since he was a kid on the Ark, and Aurora had to promise to read to him all night if he was a good boy and didn’t cry. 

When he was a baby, she’d put him in her lap and whisper Greek myths while the doctor did it or at least, that’s what she had told him. 

After the accident, when he spend so much time in medbay, he had to be given lots of medicine over shots and Clarke always held his hand while Abby did it or pulled his head to her chest and kissed his forehead while the worst of it was through.

But there was nothing soft about her movements now. She was angry. And she deserved to be so. 

“I don’t really need this.” he protests and it makes her heart skip a beat. This was exactly like old times-him arguing about his own health and her not giving a shit about his opinion because she cared so much about him.

“Yes you do, unless you want it to turn into a full blown pneumonia.” she sticks the needle in his vein a little too harsh and he jerks so she has to hold his hand tightly.

“My mom will give you more antibiotics tomorrow. We gotta keep it in check until you get better.”

“You’re overreacting, princess.” she almost jumps at the nickname “I’m good.” suddenly his touch is too much for her again and she tries to let go of his hand but this time he’s faster, his hand grips her wrist and he pulls her closer, his breath fanning her face. “We should talk.”

“Now’s not the time-”

“Please, hear me out, I just-”

“No.” she pulls away abruptly, her heart crying out, her eyes filling with tears “You don’t get to come here after nine months and demand me to listen, Bellamy Blake!”

He lets her go and his hand hangs loose.

“Clarke, I only wanted to-”

“I’m not ready, okay?” she cuts him off and he nods.

“Okay.” he says calmly, quietly, and he looks just as broken as she is ”I’m sorry. I know it’s a lot, I didn’t mean to pressure you.”

“Well, you did.” she crosses her arms over her chest and takes another step back. Ares lets a quiet whimper and Bellamy shushes him “There are free rooms in the Ark. You should talk to Kane so they could get you settled.”

“I’ll be fine outside, I can-”

“No, no you won’t be fine. You’re not fine now. You spent two weeks sleeping outside in a freezing weather and I don’t care how great you are at doing things, you’re not invincible. Never have been.”

“Clarke I-”

“I have to go check on the other patients. I’ll see you…later, I suppose” she leaves before she can say anything else that she regrets and he can do something she won’t know how to react to.

She walks away and heads to the storage room where she closes the door and collapses on her knees, her head falling to her hands, her body trembling. 

He was finally here-he really was! She has been craving that moment for months and now that he was home, she felt all those different things-confusion, love, anger, sadness and she had no idea how to deal with any of it.

She lets her head rest on the door and takes a few deep breaths.

He might be back but this was just the beginning for them.

———————————————–

Coming home was nothing like what he’d imagined and only now did he realize how stupid he’d been to believe that Clarke would just throw herself in his arms and it’d all go back to normal.

He might’ve made progress, might’ve learned many new stuff, but things here-they moved too, they’ve changed and so did she.

The camp was nothing like what he remembered. 

There were so many new buildings, cabins, a medbay, an entire mess hall, a smoke house, a place for the woods, a hen house, even three goats that the camp and the delinquents in particular just adored, a cow, two pigs and one horse that was too stubborn to let anyone ride him. 

They had hot wired the fence, had guard shifts that rotated regularly, new cadets in training, people working on different things in different fields. Monty and Raven were both doing a lot of work on the crops for the coming spring and summer, hoping this year’s yeast would be better than last ones.

Clarke was apparently doing a lot of work on the council and medbay but she also went out to hunt, which surprised him.

And there was no place for him. None at all.

He felt like a complete stranger.

He always thought that coming back, knowing how to do things, would mean he could help them improve their lives. Maybe he could be useful with advice like before and even if he couldn’t be a guard or shoot to keep them safe or participate in council meetings, he could still do stuff for them.

But he was wrong. 

He came to realize it just a few days in. A few days that he spent almost alone. 

Everyone had something to do. Clarke was avoiding him like the plague, she seemed to be too confused to be around him right now and he decided to give her her space for now-it was a lot-being away for not just a few weeks, but nine months, she surely could’ve moved on to someone else, could’ve found other things she cared more about and if that was so he had to accept it.

The delinquents were all happy to have him here, they all welcomed him in and the first night back, they had a big gathering by the fire where he drank Monty and Jasper’s moonshine and listened to them sing stupid drunk songs and tell him all about what he had missed.

They avoided mentioning Clarke, sensing that the subject is a delicate one, but they explained how they build the cabins, how they made more deals with the nearest Trikru villages and expanded the territory by five miles, which was why the guards had found him sleeping when he thought he was still not on Skaikru land.

They were enthusiastic, happy, most of all, hopeful.

They talked about the future-the summer, building more cabins for the rest of the sky people who still lived inside the Ark, growing more crops, having more chicken, hot wiring another side of the gates-they had plans, plans for the future.

And he…he realized he didn’t have one.

And all the hopes and dreams that he had about coming home and them looking up at him like they did before because now he could handle putting a shirt on his own and catching a few rabbits, were destroyed within a night’s time.

He sat there by the fire and listened to their enthusiastic chatter and his heart ached.

He was no skaikru anymore. He wasn’t a grounder either. He wasn’t their leader, not even their father or big brother figure like he was when they came to the ground.

He was a friend who they haven’t seen in nine months…so really more of an acquaintance now. He had left them because he was broken and now he was back. 

They still danced around him like they did after the accident, in the mere moments he had been with them then. Not sure when to help him get up or just let him try doing something on his own. Handing him a glass of moonshine, but not filling it too much and grabbing his hand to put it in before he could tell them he’s got it.

When Clarke came by to sit with them, she was always at least a few people away and she didn’t talk too much but when she did, she rarely addressed him. 

There was anger in her tone and sadness, something about her was broken.

And he feared he was the cause of that.

They didn’t much care about what he had done while he was away. 

They asked here and there but never probed for too much information, maybe because they sensed that when Clarke was there, she wasn’t up to hearing about it, so he kept his answers short and polite.

Kane assigned him a small compartment inside the Ark since there was not a cabin build up for him and he hated being cooped inside, so did Ares, so on most occasions, he took night walks until he could calm down enough to go to sleep. 

Everyone in camp had some work assigned to them but since he was blind and he has been away for a while, nobody expected anything of him. 

To receive rations, because they all did now, there was a rationing system since even though they were doing better, they still had to make sure all of them survived, he didn’t have to do anything. 

The older and disabled people as well as the single-parent families received thirty to fifty ration points a month so he was basically useless according to those standards.

He didn’t care though. He sometimes took his meal from mess hall and gave it to some kid that needed it more or to an older nice lady or to whoever he felt like and then left camp with his backpack, a knife and Ares and came bringing in five dead rabbits that he left in the kitchen to be cooked for everyone. 

In the afternoons he kept doing what Kai had taught him to-he would carve wooden figures that he’d give to the kids or leave camp to train on his own in the fields while also teaching Ares new things. 

A week passed like this and late one night he found himself walking outside to clear his head. 

He had woken up from a nightmare and he needed air-living inside the Ark had proven to be harder than he thought.

As he headed for the campfire, he heard some rustling behind him and he stopped dead in his tracks.

“Can’t sleep?” he smiled at the sound of her voice and turned his head to her.

“No, not really.”

“Up for a walk?” she asks and his heart skips a beat at her words. It was the first time she suggested spending time with him since he came home so of course he was willing to join her.

“Absolutely.” he was trying not to sound too enthusiastic and of course, he was failing miserably.

“I know the guards on shift, they’ll open the door for us without stirring the pod.”

“Okay.” he follows her lead and when they reach the gates, she climbs a few steps to the guards tower and tells something to the boy on shift which he comes to realize is…Miller, judging by the sound of his voice.

“If that’s your secret connection, you could’ve let me bribe him instead.” he jokes when they sneak outside and he uses his stick to check if there are any loose roots or rocks before he takes his steps. She leads patiently but she waits for him. “Where to?”

“There’s this nice ridge near the river, overlooks the area and the woods around.” he nods at that and tries to keep up with her. 

Soon they are side by side and he can breathe in the familiar sense coming from her. 

“You’ll be okay without Ares?” she asks carefully and he nods. He had left him sleeping at home. Just cause he couldn’t stop the nightmares, didn’t mean Ares had to deal with all his bullshit. 

“He was tired, we took a long walk earlier today.”

“You manage fine on your own now.” she states as they fasten their pace “You learned all of that from the grounder?”

“Kai…yeah. He taught me everything. How to fight, how to hunt, how to do basic things like getting dressed or eating. I was a mess when I got there…you know all about that so..”

“But you got better?”

“I did. It took some time but I did.”

“Hm” is all she says and she takes his elbow when they get near the ridge. It really wasn’t that far away from camp.

“Up you go.” she helps him climb and keeps her hand on his arm until they reach the edge and sit down. 

They’re quiet for a while, just listening the river and trying to find a comfortable spot. Her hand brushes next to him as she sits and he feels his face heat.

“Clarke I wanted to say that-”

“Shh,let’s listen to the river for a bit, okay?” she cuts him off yet again. 

Ever since he came home, he never could tell her exactly what he wanted to and she hasn’t let him. She was right, though-he left her behind so now she got to be the one to set the terms.

He lets the silence consume them and he doesn’t know how long they stay like this but he doesn’t mind it either. 

He can hear her breathing quiet down after the climb and then she starts picking up grass and twisting it between her fingers…or so he thinks? It’s about what he can make from her rustling jacket and her nervous movements.

“What made you come home now? And don’t say it was time. There was a reason for you to up and go in the middle of February.”

“I had a dream.” he explains simply.

“A dream?”

“A nightmare more likely. You were hurt and you needed me to come home. You begged me. I…I had many nightmares while I was away. They changed-first they were about me being blown off when I was still here in Arkadia, then they became about you.”

“What was different about this one?” she asks so calmly, it almost scares him. Maybe her threshold for pain was high now too, just like his. 

“I don’t know…you sounded really broken.”

“I was. I still am.” she tells him and he fists the ground with his hand, trying to find something to hold onto. 

A few rocks dig into his palm and he lets their edges cut into it-pain was always easier to deal with than a broken heart.

“I had many nightmares when you were away too. I’d often come here in the middle of the night, try to calm myself down.” 

“I’m sorry.” he says, it’s the only thing he can say really but it seems so shallow and stupid. She must realize it because she ignores it.

“I’d get panic attacks, cry so hard I couldn’t breathe. A few times mom had to sedate me. I slept with Raven for two weeks after you were gone cause I couldn’t stop crying.” he winces at that, her voice is getting harsher and colder and he knows he deserves it so he tries to keep his head up and take every blow.

“You know I left for a reason. I wanted to get better for you, for us all.”

“I know that. Trust me I do. I kept repeating it to myself for months. I even said it to myself when I got hurt and almost died.”

“You what?” he jerks his head at that and she pulls her hand away from him.

“I got stabbed by a boar, it almost killed me. I lost a lot of blood and when I was passing out I saw you…I hallucinated you.”

“What the hell, Clarke!” he was mad now too, he stood up and swayed on his feet so hard he had to remind himself to breathe to keep himself up. She follows his lead and stands too, the rocks crunching under her boots “Why didn’t you-”

“What? Call? Radio? Write? Send a guard to get you back to me?”

“Any of those would’ve been _great!_ ” he raises his voice now “Clarke, how could you do this? You know I’d be back right away if I knew that you were hurt!”

“Yes…you’re right, I knew.” she repeats calmly, but there’s another tinge to her voice now. It sounds as if she’s on the verge of crying “That’s why I didn’t do it. You see Bellamy….I love you so much that I was willing to die without saying goodbye to you because it was the right thing. Because you weren’t ready to come home yet, because you still had to do your own healing.”

“Clarke, I would’ve-”

“Yes, you would’ve, but the thing is Bellamy, you left. You said it yourself” he swallows hard and takes a step to her but she doesn’t come close, on the contrary, he feels her move away “You left for a reason. And I believed that. I told myself - _You know it was the right thing for him to do._ \- but then…as the months passed by I started thinking.”

“Clarke-” his voice is breaking now too.

“I told myself, I know why he did it but…I couldn’t help but think well he could’ve stayed too, he could’ve let me and the others help, he could’ve learned to deal with things on his own. Maybe it would’ve taken more than nine months, but I believed it, Bellamy. I really thought we could help.” he reaches his hand towards her but she doesn’t take it.

“Please.” he begs.

“But that’s the thing…you didn’t let us help. Maybe we couldn’t have but we surely would’ve tried. Instead you took off miles away to a village you know nothing about to let a person who has no idea who you are teach you how to be blind. You never wrote, you never radioed to ask if we were fine. You left because you cared?”

“I DID! I DO!” he says desperately again but she ignores it. 

There’s so much hurt in his voice, he wishes he could just wrap her in his arms and pull her to his chest and let all the pain go away.

Except this time…he was the source of it. 

“And yet you never checked up on us. On me.”

“You’re angry. You have every right to be angry. I understand that, I know it and it’s okay but please don’t punish me by pushing me away.”

“Isn’t that what you did?”she cuts him off and with that he loses all ground underneath him.

“After Mount Weather when I was gone, did you break, Bellamy?” she asks quietly and he clenches his jaw. He did not like remembering that.

“I did.”

“And yet knowing how much it hurt, you still did it to me anyway?” She starts walking away and he somehow manages to grab her elbow and pull her back as gently as he possible can. 

“I love you. I always have and I know that our story is messed up and our luck is basically non-existent and that most the times it’s like the universe is just having a blast turning our worlds upside down but Clarke, please…that can’t be it.”

“Oh, Bell” she whispers now and finally comes closer. 

He reaches out to cup her cheek with his free hand, the other one still keeping its grip on her as if he’s afraid she might disappear into thin air if he lets her go, and he feels the tears wetting her face.

“I love you too. I never stopped loving you, I don’t think I ever will.”

“But?” 

“But…I don’t know. You hurt me. When you left, you made this hole in my chest and somehow I still can’t recover.” he swallows again and drops her hand as if he feels like he’s poisoning her just by being closer to her “You simply…ruined me and I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay again. If I can ever let you be what you were to me before….whatever that was.”

“And now you need time? Space?”

“I just need you to be there. Nothing else. You don’t have to avoid me or be afraid to talk to me. Just…prove to me you can be there and I guess we’ll see what will happen.”

“Okay.” he agrees and moves out of her way.

She lingers for a bit, he feels her hand move up and her fingers ghost over his face for just a second before she pulls away.

He listens to her walk down the ridge into the quiet winter night and his heart breaks more and more with every step she takes.

He fucked up the one good thing he ever had in his life, he thinks and brushes away the tears from his own face angrily. 

He has never felt more guilty before and he knew that he’d carry that burden for as long as he lives, even if they somehow managed to mend what was going on between them.

They had to, though. He believed so. 

He only had to show her now.

Slowly he picks up his stick from the ground and starts walking home, giving her enough space between him and herself until they reach the gates when they make their entrance together under Miller’s sleepy snoring.

“Goodnight” she whispers as she heads to her own cabin.

“Clarke” he calls out on her and he hears her stop “I’m sorry for causing you so much pain.”

She’s quiet for a bit.

“I’m sorry for our lives being nothing but suffering”.

She’s not forgiving him. She can’t yet, but she is trying to talk to him and he had to let it mean something otherwise what was the point to anything he’d done in the past nine months.


	8. The darkness within us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Here it is-the last chapter. It's quite a long one! The next update would be an epilogue and with that the story is over. Thank you for reading and all comments and kudos are much appreciated.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @jasperjoordan

After their conversation by the river, he tries to just be there for her like she wanted. 

Deep down he’s angry at himself, guilty beyond reason and the next day he goes to Raven’s mechanic shop and asks her to tell him everything about the time Clarke was hurt.

She’s reluctant at first, saying that she can’t betray her friend and he tells her he doesn’t need someone holding his hand, he just wants the truth.

And so she tells him. 

She tells him all about Clarke hallucinating and calling his name before they put her out and then all the nightmares that followed after while she was drowning in sweat and fever and struggled to breathe on her own. 

Raven tells him all about the pain Clarke was in and how she refused to take more medicine because others might need it too and they were after all, on strict rationing still. 

She tells him all about her being stubborn and trying to walk on her own when she wasn’t yet ready, tearing up her stitches more than once and her mom and Jackson assigning a delinquent to keep her company and make sure she’s not stupid enough to get herself killed.

And that was it, really, Raven had told him. At some point she wasn’t sure if Clarke was really being stubborn or recklessly suicidal. 

Did she want to die? Or was she simply too sad to keep pushing all the pain away?

He doesn’t know that either. 

It’s clear that even though the delinquents seem happy to see him, they are not on his side and he doesn’t believe they should be. He left and broke Clarke so badly, they had to watch her fall apart, he doesn’t deserve their forgiveness or their compassion.

He doesn’t see much of her either. Mostly during the day she’s busy with work at medbay and council meetings, it is usually at night when they all gather around the fire to have dinner that she comes by.

It is some unspoken rule they have made while he was gone-that all of them, the delinquents-Jasper, Monty,Harper, Miller, Raven and Clarke gather around after taking their rations from the mess hall and have dinner around the fire, away from the adults and the other sky people. 

This was a place only for them. A time they only got to spend together.

The first night he came back, he wasn’t sure where he should go but Monty has taken his hand and brought him there and he has been joining them ever since, though he knew he probably created a certain tension, so he tried to keep quiet and eat silently while Ares rested his head on his boots.

“I’m really loving that fish tonight” Jasper chimes in on a particular night a few weeks after Clarke and Bellamy took the unfortunate night walk. “We should ask the hunters to fish more now that the weather is getting a bit warmer.”

Bellamy smiles. 

It wasn’t the hunter parties that brought the fish in. It was him. In the morning he liked going out to train, walk Ares and sometimes hunt. 

Whatever he caught he brought to the kitchen, not that anyone else in camp but the cook, an older man called Henry, knew. He was a single dad and had a young boy Matthew, who liked hanging around Bellamy while his dad cleaned up the game he had bought. 

“It’s also healthy.” Clarke adds “I’ll talk to Kane, see how we can rearrange the parties.” 

She sat just a few feet away from him but he still got chills when he heard her voice, not knowing how he should react or what he should do. 

All the pain that she carried with her now-it was because of him, and he felt horrible even sitting there, like a reminder of all the awful things he had done, a reminder that she now had to look at every day.

He lets himself get lost in thoughts for a bit, resting his head on his hand and trying to figure out how the hell he was going to fix all this when someone’s loud chippery yell interrupts his brooding.

“Bell-oh-meeee!!” they hear a voice coming from behind and at first he almost grabs his stick until he places it to the person it belongs to “Bell-me!!!!”

“Hey, Matthew” the kid jumps from behind, hanging on his neck. Bellamy notices the chatter around the fire quiets down.

“Will you tell me a stowy!”

“Matthew, get off of Bellamy, he’s having dinner.” Henry, his father comes by and places his hand on Bellamy’s shoulder in greeting. “I’m sorry, he’s a bit enthusiastic today.”

“Stowy, Bell-oh-me!” Matthew keeps chanting as she swings off his back and comes before him. 

When he sees Ares he gasps “Hey, Awes!” he pats him and Ares apparently gets up on his feet and licks his face before lying back down. He was a lazy one at night. Liked just curling in Bellamy’s legs and letting the fire keep him warm. 

“It’s okay. I’m done with it anyway” Bellamy pushes his almost full plate away and gestures at Matt “C’me here, big boy.”

“Why did you not eat your food?” the kid asks.

“Huh, I like him” Raven says and the delinquents all chuckle at that.

“I’m not hungry.” Bellamy strokes his hair and bounces him on his leg which makes Matthew laugh.

“But you caught the fish! Now you gotta eat it!”

“You what?” Clarke asks confused and Bellamy turns his head to her. 

“He caut it!” Matthew repeats and his hands move up to Bellamy’s face. He liked touching him-his little fingers pepper all over and Bellamy blows some air into his hair while he’s tugging on his beard. 

“Matthew, come on, Bellamy will tell you a story tomorrow when he swings by the kitchen, okay? Let him be now.” Henry takes his son’s hand and Matthew jumps off Bellamy’s lap.

“But, papa!”

“It’s okay, buddy. It’s time for bed anyway. You can help me teach Ares something new tomorrow, huh?”

“Aw-kay, Bell-oh-mee!” the kid agrees though he sounds a bit sad.

“Say goodnight to Bell and his friends now.” Henry instructs and before Bellamy knows it, the boy is flinging himself in his arms and hugging him tightly. 

Then he jumps off, says a quick “Goodbwye” and leaves.

The silence after is deafening.

“What is it?” he finally asks. Without seeing their faces, he had no way of knowing what they all felt.

“You hunt?” Miller asks first.

“Yeah.”

“How the hell do you hunt?”

“JASPER!” Monty cuts him off for being rude “He means-”

“I know what he means, it’s okay.” Bellamy reassures with a light smile.”I didn’t think I’d be able to do it either when I first started trying.”

“And the fish?” Raven seems even more confused than the rest of them, something he didn’t expect of her.

He shrugs.

“There are ways”

“Hey, maybe we should all go by the river one of these days. I need to wash some clothes”

“Yeah and shower too!” Miller jokes and Bellamy hears Jasper slap him with something on the …was it the head or his shoulder? He couldn’t tell. 

Some things he’ll never get to see.

“The weather will be good tomorrow, maybe we could all go, have some fun.” Raven suggests and he imagines her looking at Clarke for approval.

“Since when are you a weather forecaster, Reyes?”

“Oh shut up, Miller.”

“Clarke?” Monty asks, always waiting for the last word coming from her. 

Ares rolls on his back and shoves his head between Bellamy’s legs. He was seriously the laziest dog sometimes. Bellamy leans down to pat his nuzzle and takes his stick. It was time to head home for the night.

“Sure. But after we’re done discussing the tasks for the week and figure out a way of powering the water for the crops on the west field”

They don’t even let her finish up before they all burst in cheers, the clacking of cups is heard, they laugh and drink. 

He gets up.

“You all have fun then.” he says and nudges Ares who groggily gets up on his feet. 

He’s already with his back to them when he hears Clarke’s voice.

“Bellamy, wait!” she must be standing up because he hears her tentatively take a step forward. “You should come too.”

He swallows hard, not sure what to say to that.

“Yeah man, you can show us how you catch that fish with your superpowers.”

“I don’t have superpowers, Miller” he says with a smile and his head turns back to where Clarke’s voice was coming from “I’ll only slow you down. You all got work to do.”

“We can take the rover. Actually…we probably should. If Jasper gets drunk there’s no way we’re carrying him back home no matter how wirey he is.” Raven adds as well but he still waits on Clarke to say something else-protest, change her mind, say anything at all. 

“Then it’s settled.” Clarke cuts off before he can figure some other dumb argument about why this is a bad idea “We’ll meet at lunch by the mess hall.” they all hum approvingly and he gives a quiet nod in her direction before heading back to his old metal can.

—————————————————

It’s a good day-a warm one, actually way too sunny for the middle of March or at least it’s how it feels to Clarke. 

She might be a bit flushed after being stuck in the rover for half an hour with the rest of the kids, arguing loudly about dumb stuff and singing their lungs out. 

Bellamy’s in the back, sitting near the door and he seems way too pale for his own good though she can’t figure out why, he had always loved being in the rover, even when he wasn’t driving it. 

She remembers a time when he taught her how to do it and it had been one exhausting late summer afternoon until she got the hang of it at dinner time but not before driving them into a tree which almost caused him and Raven a heart attack. 

Ares seemed to hate being cooped up in a black metal box that produced horrible sounds too but for Bellamy he was ready to do just about anything. He was at his feet at first but then when Raven turned the engine on he had jumped in Bellamy’s lap and whimpered like a child.

Now she could see them from the rear view mirror-Bellamy stroking his head soothingly and talking to him in grounder-apparently he had learned it while he was away, but there was no chance she could catch the words from all the commotion around her.

The delinquents were happy, way too happy, excited even. 

Spending the winter all cooped up in camp and only going out to hunt, which wasn’t the most pleasant of activities, had tired them out. 

They needed this as much as they needed food and sleep and even after all this time, she cared too much about them to simply let them be miserable in camp when they could do this trip.

When they arrived, Jasper was first off the door, running down to the river that was no longer frozen and taking off his shoes so he could try the water. 

The others were taking out stuff from the back of the rover and Bellamy was the last one out, trying to make it on his own when she reached out to grab his elbow.

“Easy, it’s high.”

“Yeah, I know. Thank you.” that was what they were like now. 

Polite and distant. Her hand burned on his elbow but she still let it linger for a bit more until she was sure he was okay and won’t fall flat on his ass. 

He seemed a bit pale still and he touched his head with his free hand as if it hurt him. 

“You alright?” she asks and he gives her a fake smile but he seems shaken. 

She doesn’t really get why this drive was so much for him. She had seen him manage so well around camp these days, I mean he was…fishing and catching rabbits, how was a drive in the rover suddenly too much? Or maybe she was missing something…

“All good.” he reassures and turns to Ares who’s too afraid to jump off the metal box so Bellamy has to take him and place him on the ground like he was a little baby. 

He swings a bit before he gets a sense of where he is and licks Bellamy’s fingers. 

“Come on now, you’ll like the water. I know you love it.” Bellamy soothes him and then slowly heads to the delinquents who were already screaming their guts out by the river.

“You all will scare the fish like this.” Bellamy chimes in when he approaches and Clarke follows swiftly behind, dropping their bags and helping Raven pull the blankets on the ground and take the food out. Jasper is jumping around holding his leg.

“It’s cold, it’s cold, IT IS SO COLD!!!!” he comes jumping around Bellamy, slapping his arm “Why didn’t you tell me it’s so cold?”

“It’s March…do I need to tell you, Jasper?”

“Yes!!!! I also think I stepped on a rock.”

“Come here, let me see” Clarke orders and Jasper jumps to her with his foot raised in the air “It’s just a small cut. Here, I’ll wrap it up so you don’t get it infected.”

“Okay, mom”

“JASPER!” both her and Monty scold.

“She told you not to call her that” Raven adds and looks up at Bellamy who’s still standing next to them awkwardly trying to find a place. “Blake there’s a blanket on your left, just sit down you look like a ghost.”

“Thanks.” he carefully settles down and pats Ares on the back “Go, boy!” Ares bolts off to the river and they see him splashing around a second later, having the time of his life. Miller and Monty join in on the play and start throwing a stick for him to catch.

“He’s not wrong, though, you know?” Bellamy says when Raven goes to the rover to get the rest of the food yelling at the others that they’re being stupid idiots.

“What?”

“You are kind of like their mom. They come to you for everything-when they’re hurt, when they need advice, when they want permission for something.”

“Look who’s talking, mister Little-kids-jumping-on-my-back Blake. That boy adores you.”

“Nah, he doesn’t know me. He just loves Ares and listening to stupid stories I tell him.” many things might’ve changed about Bellamy but his lack of self-worth had not. 

He still did not consider himself to be a good leader or friend and he never took any kind of praise. She wishes she could reach out and touch his hand, squeeze it and tell him he’s an idiot but she stops mid-action and pulls away.

“Come on, Blake, show us your fishing skills!” Miller yells and Bellamy turns his head in their direction.

“You’ll need to get out of the water first, you’re scaring all the fish!” he says back and leans further on his elbows. 

Miller waves his hand dismissively even though Bellamy can’t see it and Clarke’s heart aches- _they still forgot he was blind._

“He just flipped me the bird, didn’t he?” Bellamy reads her thoughts.

“Something like it. Are you okay? You seem a bit shaken after the ride.”

“I’m fine.”

“Just because things between us are weird now, doesn’t mean we can’t talk about stuff, Bellamy. In fact…I assume that could only push us in the right direction.” she urges and he nods, rubbing the back of his neck before sighing and giving up.

“It’s just that…last time I was in a rover, it was before…I got blown away, you know?”

“Oh.” she wants to slap herself. How did she not figure that out? Of course he felt bad, he was probably brought back to that exact moment. 

That’s why he got so pale last night when Miller mentioned they could use the rover.

“It’s okay. I just need a second like Ares, to get my head back together.”

“Maybe you should get in the water too like him, it will help.”

“I don’t see you joining in, princess.” he teases and she smiles, feeling herself blush. 

Suddenly his hand reaches out to her and she thinks that he’ll cup her cheek, but instead his hand ends up on the scarf around her neck, his fingers ghosting over before pulling away.

“That’s a nice scarf you got there” he whispers, ducking his head down and smiling to himself.

“It was really you.” she states and he nods. 

“I always cared, princess. There wasn’t a day I was out there that I did not think of you.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that so she lets the silence linger for a bit like before though this time it is not an awkward one. It’s more peaceful, sullen, but peaceful. He gets up on his feet with a little swing like he usually did nowadays and takes off his shirt and boots.

Then he extends his hand to her and she looks at him confused though there’s no way he can see that.

“Come on,have some fun. The world’s hard enough as it is and god knows we won’t solve all our shit today so…”

He heads to the water and she decides that she’ll join him so she pulls her jacket off, takes her boots and socks and rolls her jeans. 

At first they have some fun, all of them together but since the kids have no intentions of leaving the water, he decides to head a down the stream, no more than ten-twenty feet away from them. 

He hears Clarke follow behind and he doesn’t question it but he smiles. When they reach a more peaceful place of the river, he takes a second to just listen to everything around him. She stops too, almost right behind him, he can hear her fast breathing.

“What are you doing?”

“Shhh, quiet.” he whispers. He leans down in the water, drags his hand through the surface very carefully. 

“Bellamy, what the hell?”

“I’m trying to get us lunch, princess, so I’d appreciate it if you kept quiet so I can actually do it.” she groans pretending to be frustrated by him “And don’t move, okay?”

“You’re still such a jackass.”

“Thank you.”

He carefully digs his hands in the water and waits. She grows extremely frustrated with him by the minute but doesn’t say anything and thankfully, doesn’t move. 

“Here we go” he says to himself and a second later, the water is splashing all around him as he raises a relatively big fish out of the water. He hears her gasp in surprise as he struggles to keep it in his hands.

“Damn it, she’s a fighter.”

“Oh shit, you really did it!”

“Don’t sound so surprised, princess.” he says mockingly as he heads for the shore but she puts her hand on his shoulder.

“No, let it go.”

“What?”

“We have enough food for lunch and you don’t have anywhere to put it right now, so just let it go.”

“But we can-” she squeezes his shoulder and he finally relents. “Fine, fine, whatever you want.” he leans down again and let’s the fish go. “Did it swim away?” he asks.

“Yeah. It’s free.”

“We just wasted perfectly good lunch right here.” he really heads for the shore now when he feels her throwing some water on his back.

“What on earth are you doing?”

“What do you think I’m doing? You stink, I’m trying to wash you.”

“No, you’re fooling around” he turns back and throws some water in the direction of her voice but it seems to never reach her because she just giggles and jumps away.

It turns into a play. She gets him wet from head to toe and he keeps trying to get it back at her but she’s like the devil, moving around so fast, confusing him with fake splashes and kicking the water whenever she could. He barely gets her shirt wet and when she ends up playfully pushing his shoulder, he loses his balance and falls head on in the freezing water.

“Oh, shit!” she yells seriously now. He can imagine she’s closer to the shore now, judging by the distance of her voice “I’m so sorry, Bellamy.”

“It’s okay.” he decides to turn this around so he pretends to be getting up but he slips right under and splashes water all around him “Dammit”

“What is it?”

“I think I’m stuck.”

“No, you’re not.” she says but she moves forward, he can hear her taking a few steps further and he wants to smile but instead he gives her his most troubled expression. 

The water is cold, but bearable. He has showered in a freezing river back in Kai’s village but he couldn’t stay too long inside and neither should she unless they both wanted to get pneumonia.

“Just give me a second” he tries again and once more he slips right under, pretending to be unable to drag his left foot out, the bad one, knowing she’ll notice.

“Oh, dear god, just stop it and get over here! You’ll freeze to death and my mom just fixed that damn cough of yours.”

“I’m trying, princess, it’s not like I want to be stuck in the middle of the river but someone pushed me there and now they won’t believe me.”

“That’s cause you want to grab my hands and drag me under with you.”

“Right. Cause I live for making others suffer apparently.”

“Don’t twist my words, Bellamy Blake!”she walks towards him and stops again. He really wants to smile but he’s trying very hard to keep it together. “I swear to god, if you’re lying to me, I’m going to kick your ass back to camp.”

“Looking forward to it, princess.” he scoffs and pulls his hand out in hopes that she’ll grab it and help him move up, not that he really needed it but she didn’t know that yet. 

He feels her hesitate, take another minute to estimate if he was kidding or if this was real and when she finally takes his hand, he plays it smart-he lets her pull him up a bit, think that she’s in control and then when he’s midway up, he grabs her arm with both of his hands and pulls her down in the water with him.

She screams as she throws water everywhere around them, struggling to get free but he holds her close and then when he finally lets go of her, she kicks his chest with her fists and screams in his face but he is glad.

This was a game as much as it wasn’t. She needed to let her frustration out somehow and if it meant getting mad at him for dragging her into a freezing river to do it, then he was fine with it.

“You asshole!” she says as her fists keep hitting his chest and he lets her “You total piece of shit! How could you! _HOW DARE YOU!”_

His arms are wrapped around her body, keeping her close enough to him so she doesn’t get herself hurt. 

“I TRUSTED YOU!”

“And I betrayed you.” he whispers and her punches get lighter. They’re not talking about him fooling her around anymore and they know it. “I’m an idiot.”

“Yes, you are!” she barks in his face and finally her arms get tired and her punches are more like failed attempts at causing him pain. She cries and he pulls her head to his chest. 

“I’m sorry, Clarke.” he whispers and for the first time since he came home, he gets to say it in a way that she’ll let it sink in, try to understand that he’s being honest. “I’m so sorry.”

She cries in his arms, nuzzles her nose in his shoulder and he holds her close.

“I caused you so much pain. _ **So much fucking pain.**_ ” he’s trying not to break down too so he just lets his hands roam over her. He hasn’t touched her, truly touched her, since he came back, so he pulls her away as much as she doesn’t want to and he raises his hands. “Can I…Can I touch you?”

“Yeah.” she whispers after a few seconds and his hands end up cupping her cheeks. His fingers move swiftly over her face-her eyes, her forehead, her nose and when they reach her lips, his thumb brushes over them carefully, but with want.

“You’ve lost weight.” he says and then before he can lose himself even further he moves to her hair “This is shorter now.”

“Easier to maintain in the winter.” he nods and she swallows hard as his hand moves down to her neck, her arms then her ribs. 

She sucks in a breath when his fingers dance around the edge of her shirt, waiting for permission. When she doesn’t fight him and nods just barely, her head lolling against his chest now, so he can feel it, he sneaks his fingers under the thin material. 

His hands rub up and down her sides at first, trying to warm her up not that she needed him to do it-her body was burning up as it was just from his touch alone, but he still wanted to take care of her. He feels her ribs and then his thumb settles on the scar on her side.

“Is that-”

“Yeah.”

“It’s big.” he says through teeth, angrily but mostly she feels this anger is directed to him than to her so she grabs his wrist trying to ground him.

“Bellamy-”

“I did this to you.” he suddenly pulls away from her as if he’s burned.

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. It’s not okay at all.” he heads for the shore, rushing away as if he’s suddenly been awaken from a dream and she follows swiftly after him.

“Bellamy, don’t do this!” she yells as he makes it outside and starts pulling on the shirt over his wet body, then grabbing his boots and shoving them on his feet without the socks on. 

“Don’t do what? You’re angry aren’t you? Just a few minutes ago you were so angry at me that you wished you could make me feel as much pain as you have!”

“Of course I am angry. What did you expect, that you’ll come home and I’ll jump in your arms and we’ll live happily ever after?”

“I don’t know” he says throwing his arms in the air helplessly “I don’t know what I was expecting but I know now I was selfish. Too selfish and I caused you to feel so much pain.”

“Bellamy, we can’t keep taking one step forward and two steps back. We need to talk about this, okay? We need to somehow find a way to let it out of our systems and move on.”

“Yeah, well I don’t think this will happen overnight, princess.”

“Nobody says it has to. I’m angry, you’re guilty, we’re both fucked up.”

“When were we not?” he asks with a sad smile and she comes closer. 

“Let’s just take it slowly, okay?”she raising herself on her toes and wrapping her arms around his neck. 

She itches to take off the bandage covering his eyes and see him for who he truly is. She hates that he’s so ashamed of himself that he has to cover the scars from the accident, she hates seeing him all broken like her. 

She has spent the last few weeks since he came home observing him and though he seemed to have learned a great deal, he was still walking shoulders slumped and he still rarely genuinely smiled. 

He was sad and she wished for once that she could kick all the sadness and desperation out of their lives.

She didn’t even wish for happiness in particular, she only wanted them to be okay, feel normal. She wanted them to sleep peacefully through the night and not wake up yelling or shaking. 

She wished for serenity.

Her fingers dug in his curls and their noses touched.

“Clarke-” his breath ghosts over her face, she’s so close to his lips and he leans further down, closer to her, his hands settling on her waist.

Her lips are brushing over his when they hear the sound of a gun coming from up the river where the kids were. They pull away abruptly and for a second they listen to the delinquents talk loudly and other voices joining in.

“Shit, what now” Bellamy utters, barely managing to throw his shirt back on and get a hold of his stick before she grabs his hand and starts tugging him to through the forest, towards the field where they had left the others. He stumbles a few times but she manages to steady him enough so he doesn’t fall on his ass and he follows her lead as she runs forward breathlessly.

“Oh dammit, that’s not Trikru” Clarke announces when they stop abruptly. 

He has lost all sense of his surroundings but when he reaches to his left he finds a tree-they were at the edge of the woods and he thanks the universe that he managed to grab his stick before she started pulling him to get back or he’d be completely out of it now. 

“Who is it?”

“Azgeda.”

“How many?” he hears the kids, Miller, saying something about them just hanging around, getting water and washing clothes but the other voices he can’t make out.

“Three, two are still on their horses, the other one is down arguing with Miller. I need to-” she tries to leave but he grabs her hand and pulls her back abruptly.

“No! If they see you, they might as well just kill you right then and there.” he tries to reason with her “You know they still believe in Wanheda, they’d want to take your power.”

“Well what do you suggest, we can’t just let them out there!”

“We’re not. Let me handle this.”

“Bellamy, no! No way!” she stands in his way just as he’s about to leave “This is insane, you’ll just get yourself killed!”

“Have some faith, princess. Just because I’m blind, doesn’t mean I can’t do this anymore.”

“Bellamy-”

“Shh, I got it. Please, just let me do this, okay?” he says cupping her cheek and making her listen to him, truly listen. She sighs and her hands shake when she grips his “I got it, alright?”

“This is stupid!”

“It’s not. You need to stay here, it gives us leverage. If things go wrong, you can sneak to the rover, get the guns and shoot, okay?” she hated it when he made sense and all his stupid self-sacrificing plan that always involved him being in danger and her hiding out with the guns making sure she had his back. 

She’s so frustrated, she wants to kick his ass, but before she can do anything, he leans down and captures her lips with his for a brief kiss before he pulls away. 

“Love you,princess.” he whispers. 

She’s too stunned to even register him leaving the shelter of the woods and she reaches out to grab his hand but he’s already out on the field.

“What the hell is going on?” he announces his presence and all heads turn to him. She sucks in a breath and squeezes her eyes shut. The rover was just a few feet up from her position, she could sneak in and target the grounders from there using Bellamy’s old rifle. 

“Are you the leader of this group?” the Azgeda warrior asks as Clarke starts carefully, quietly, walking to the rover.

“I am.” Bellamy responds with confidence as he steps in front of the delinquents. 

Miller, who was previously standing in front of Jasper, Monty and Raven as if he trying to protect them in case something happened, has not moved from his place but Monty and especially Jasper looked like they’d seen a ghost. 

Raven was gritting her teeth so hard, Clarke could basically smell her rage from all the way here and Bellamy…she stopped and took a minute to look at him-he was standing there completely calm, gripping his stick with his right hand and staring at the grounder as if he could truly see him.

The Azgeda warriors laugh at his words.

“You Skaikru sure have interesting choice of leaders.”

“What is it you want?” Bellamy cuts them off,taking another step forward, separating the delinquents from the Azgeda warriors as much as he can, putting himself in harm’s way, as usually. 

Clarke swallows hard and keeps walking. 

“We’re just passing by, heading south to Polis for the summit. We always use this spot to fish and make camp.”

“Yeah, well this is our land now. You’re trespassing” at that, the Azgeda warriors laugh and the leader comes closer to Bellamy.

“Well, we don’t care about it.”

“Too bad.” Bellamy swings his stick and hits his jaw before the grounder can bark another insult. 

He’s so fast that if Clarke wasn’t looking, she’d surely miss it and wonder where the hell did the blood on the grounder’s face came from. 

She finally reaches the rover and sneaks in from the back, rummaging through the bags and finding the rifle and the ammo. 

She opens up the left window and aims at them, trying to find the best position if she needs to intervene. 

All of them know that killing those warriors will only end up involving them in a bigger mess that they could handle and after the year and a half of peace that their people had, another conflict and possibly war, would not be taken well. 

“What is it? A cripple is beating up your ass?” Clarke can’t help but smile at this, he was one cocky son of a bitch no matter if he could see or not. 

Miller tries to reach out for his gun and help Bellamy but he waves his hand and mumbles something she can’t make out, probably to stay out of if or that he had it handled. 

“What do you say we fight for it-if I lose, you’re free to come here every time you’re on the road, fish, camp, stay for days and we won’t bother you.”

“And if you win?” the grounder who’s way pissed off now after Bellamy’s surprised hit, takes another step forward and takes out his blade.

“Then you get the hell out of here and we don’t see your faces ever again.” the warrior laughs and swings his sword but Bellamy raises his stick just before it heads for his chest.

“There’s only one problem with that -you don’t know how I look like cause you’re blind.” Bellamy pretends to find it funny too and heads for his legs but the grounder’s fast and swings for his arm, managing to slash through and make a deep cut on his left hand. Clarke gasps and grips the gun.

Sometimes she really hated it when he was playing hero.

Bellamy is smart, though-he ducks when the grounder swings again and shoves his stick in the guy’s stomach. He swings and Bellamy uses it to his advantage, giving him a series of harsh hits on his face-his ribs and his side. The grounder tries to get back to it, but Bellamy’s too fast. 

She has never seen him fight like this before, surely not when he could still see. He was good at hand to hand combat but he had always been a better shooter. 

Now…now it seemed like he wasn’t giving the guy any time to breathe and all the grounder could do was swing his blade at him and try to cut him. 

Bellamy hits his head and kicks him in the stomach. The grounder almost falls on his back but manages to grip his hand last minute and use the hand of his sword to hit him in the ribs and then trip his leg-the bad one. 

Bellamy falls on his knees and Clarke gasps, putting her finger on the trigger. 

She can’t believe she’s faced with another impossible choice yet again-save him and start a war or let him die and lose herself completely.

“Come on, Bellamy. Come on.” she whispers “You can do this.”

And it’s like he hears her because when the grounder swings at his head and Clarke’s just about to shoot, he raises his hand and grabs the blade with one hand, letting it cut through. 

He yells and gets back on his feet as he pushes the grounder forward. The man swings, and loses his balance, mostly because of the surprised attack and Bellamy uses it to rip the blade away from him and grab his stick from the ground.

He hits his head once again and then his chest, then she watches the most badass of moves where he twists around and shoves the stick under the grounder’s legs and trips him over.

For a moment there’s nothing but silence as the Azgeda warrior struggles to breathe and Bellamy stands beside him, leaning on his stick.

Then the delinquents burst in, running to him, yelling and screaming at the other two warriors and circling Bellamy, pulling him to their chests and hugging him.

The Azgedans help their leader up and get on their horses, yelling insults at them, saying things like this isn’t over but mostly they are embarrassed by the fact that a blind skaikru person made fun of them so they leave before it can get worse.

Clarke throws the rifle and jumps off the rover, running in their direction.

“Let me through!” she shoves their hands away and finds him leaning on his stick heavily, his face a little bruised, the cut on his arm coloring his jacket, struggling to take his breath and she just lungest at him, holding him tight. “When will you stop being a stupid self-sacrificing idiot?” she asks in his ear and he chuckles as he embraces her.

“Never. I love you guys too much to ever stop.” they all hear that and they pile on top of him and Clarke, having one big collective hug.

“Oh, I’ve missed you man!” Miller says when they finally pull back.

“You are such a badass! How the hell did you do this? And that swing, and his head!” Jasper blabs enthusiastically “Maybe if I get blind I’ll be able to do that too!”

“You’re not getting blind!” Monty slaps the back of his head and grips Bellamy’s elbow ”You were awesome man. How did you learn all this?”

Bellamy shrugs, utters something unintelligible under his nose and waves his hand dismissively like he always does. 

“Okay, I think it’s time we got the hell out of here before those guys came back with back-up or something” Raven says and all of them agree, heading for the rover, leaving Bellamy and Clarke behind, giving them a minute to themselves.

Her hand slides down her arm and covers his cut.

“Will there ever be a day when I won’t have to patch you up?” she asks and he smiles.

“What would be the fun in that?”

“You’re unbelievable sometimes.”

“But you love me?”

“How could I not? I get to practice my stitching on you almost every day. It’s every girl’s dream.”

He leans in her arms, openly looking for a hug-he was like that sometimes, needing affection, touch, it was one of the many things she loved about him, so she held him close and then kissed his neck, his cheek, before ending up back on his lips.

“Come on, love birds! Time to go home!” Raven yells from the rover’s window and when he pulls away she can imagine him rolling his eyes behind the bandage.

“I’m gonna kill her.” Clarke chuckles and grabs his hand, dragging him to the rover. 

They end up together in the back, next to Monty and Jasper who won’t shut up about Bellamy looking like a badass, chattering excitedly. He reaches out his hand and she grips his back. 

And for the first time in forever, she feels normal. 

——————————————–

A few days later, she’s just about waking up and trying to put her jeans on when someone knocks on her door. 

She groans as she heads there, still too sleepy to even register that she’s getting mad at whoever’s on the other side and she’s ready to remind the person who’s so annoyingly bothering her that she doesn’t discuss camp issues before she’s had her coffee when she finds Bellamy as she swings the door open.

“Princess?” one of his hands is holding up a big beautiful bouquet made of lilacs and the other is hidden behind his back. Ares is sitting next to him looking as sleepy and grumpy as her and tilting his head to the side.

“What the hell are you doing here so early?”

“Good morning to you too!” he smiles and hands her the flowers “Your favorites.” it’s true, she loves them and the bastard knows how to soothe her grumpy morning nature because she can’t help but smile and grab them, burying her nose in them and catching their scent.

“If you were five minutes early, I would’ve kicked your ass.” he chuckles and lingers there awkwardly, his cheeks blushing as she grabs his hand and pulls him inside, closing the door shut behind them.

“I was out checking my rabbit snares when I smelled them, thought you might like having them around the house.”

She produces a half-satisfied half-still sleepy noise when she heads to the sink to fill in an old jar to put them in. 

He lingers there uncertain as to whether he should come in or stay at a safe distance from her. They still haven’t talked about the kiss from the other day. Okay, kisses, if she had to be precise but they have not been as awkward around each other as before when they hanged together by the fire at night or met throughout the day. 

She takes a good look at him-Bellamy always was a morning person. 

His eyes would snap open at six am and he’d sit up, put his boots and clothes on and get ready to make breakfast or go out and grab them something from the mess hall. 

She admired his ability to be so chipper and enthusiastic when the sun had barely risen while her sleepy nature required at least an hour before she could talk to people and not snap at them.

Now she stares at him, all big and broad, two rabbits hanging from a rope on his shoulder, Ares always lingering close by his left leg to keep him safe. 

His hair is a mess and she has the sudden urge to carefully wrap her arms around his neck and remove the bandage from his face so she could see his eyes, touch his face, count the freckles on his nose. 

And then she notices something else.

“Why are you keeping your hand behind your back?”

“What? Uh…Oh…well” she puts the flowers on the table and strides to him, grabbing his hand and pulling his palm up to her face.

“Aha, I knew it! You tore the stitches!”

“It’s not a big deal!”

“Your bandage is soaked.” she sighs and rubs her forehead with her free hand as she tugs him to the table and pushes him down to a chair.

“What if I came here to ask you to fix it?”

“You did not. You were going to hand me the flowers and then make some dumb comment about having other stuff to do and leave, getting it dirty and probably infected. I know you, Bellamy Blake.”

He shrugs and gives her his knowing smirk. 

For a moment she’s reminded of the simple times when he’d do that in the middle of camp, when the kids were laughing or drinking or partying all around them and he’d look for her in the middle of the crowd and when his eyes fell on her, he’d give her that same teasing smile and then embarrassingly look away as if he was ashamed for needing someone by his side, someone he could share his feelings with.

She carefully places his hand on the table and unwraps the bloody bandage.

“It’s way too early in the morning for me to be dealing with stubborn you.”

“Oh, please, you love stitching people. It gives you that immense amount of pleasure, to fix things, to heal. It’s why you are a doctor.”

“Not yet.”

“That bullshit exam your mom is trying to make you take is just a formality.” he states as if he’s outraged by it himself and ouches when she sanitizes his cut.

“I’m not the only one who has to do it, Bellamy. It’s how it works here.”

“Oh yeah? And the two other people who didn’t have to deal with the delinquent-prone-to-every-accident-on-earth brigade will surely fail, trust me. You’re better than all of them. You’re even better than your mother now.”

“You’ve been away for nine months, how do you even know how good I am?”

“I talk to people.” he says way too smug for his own good so she uses the moment to make the first stitch and watch him grit his teeth in pain. His other hand reaches out to squeeze her wrist in support. “You’ll kick ass, princess.”

“Thanks.” she smiles and keeps working on his wound when the door opens up and Miller, Raven, Monty, Jasper and Harper make it inside.

“Good morning, good morning!” Jasper yells as a greeting as they make their way inside and stop abruptly at the sight of the two of them there “Oh…if we are interrupting we can come later.”

“It’s time for your morning briefing isn’t it?” Bellamy asks and pulls his hand away “I can come later.”

“Sit down before I can mess up your stitches, Blake.” she commands and pulls him back down “And you guys settle in, though one of you better be bringing me coffee. This idiot pissed me off way too early.”

“Here it is!” Raven comes behind her and places a steaming cup next to her before squeezing her shoulder hello. He hears the other kids settle down around him and he feels like the odd one out.

“Seriously, we can finish this later, you guys have work to do.”

“You should stay. We’re discussing who we’ll have to send to TonDC with the construction brigade and mapping out the crop’s fields.” Monty, who sits behind him announces and Bellamy hears him dropping papers and probably maps which he spreads over just when Clarke starts wrapping his hand in a bandage.

“I don’t like having a-” he begins to protest but she groans.

“I don’t care.” she cuts him off and he hears her take a sip from the cup “Oh, that is what happiness feels like. Thank you, Raven.”

“Welcome, Griffin. Nice flowers you got there.”

“Lilacs, your favorite. Wonder who got up so early to get them for you” Miller chimes in teasingly and Bellamy tries to kick him under the table but instead gets Raven who protests loudly and throws a pen at him. 

“There’s nothing to discuss, I’ll go” Miller says.

“You shouldn’t be the only one of us that does. You need back up.” Bellamy says on instinct and then remembers that he’s no longer really part of the making decision group “Or…I mean…don’t listen to me. I should get going now, get those to the kitchen” he stands up just as Clarke is finishing off his bandage and Ares follows his lead.

He’s almost running to the door when someone’s small cold hand grabs his. The room is quiet and he feels himself going all red.

“Bellamy-” Clarke says “Stay. Please.”

“Yeah, we could use your insight, man” Miller adds but he still doesn’t take a step back.

“You’re a dumbass but you make some decent points” Raven says and Monty joins in as well “I think you’d be of great help with the crops and stuff.”

“I’m..I appreciate what you guys are doing.” he says after a moment “But you don’t have to. I know it’s not…the same anymore and I can’t…be there for you, so”

“Are you kidding me? You beat Azgeda’s ass yesterday!” he hears Raven stand up, her chair squeaking loudly against the floor.

“Yeah and you probably hunt better than me.” Monty adds, Clarke’s hand never leaves his, instead she tugs him forward.

“Don’t be an idiot, man. Just sit down.” Jasper urges and after a beat Clarke says.

“We need you, Bellamy.”

He finally nods and lets her take him back to the table. Though he still thinks he’s of no use to them, that this is probably them pitying him or feeling bad for him,he can’t leave. 

He can’t turn his back to them ever again.

——————————————

“You didn’t get much sleep last night, did you?” she asks him when the delinquents leave and she’s gathering the maps and papers from the table. 

He simply shrugs and leans back on the chair, trying to look as relaxed as he can but she can see it in his posture, he’s exhausted and the only thing hiding the dark circles under his eyes was the black bandage. 

His hand is trembling though, she noticed it when she was wrapping up his hand and at first she thought it was because of the wound but then she noticed him digging his good one in Ares’ fur to hide it from the others. He always was good at masking his weaknesses. 

“You know how it is-there’s good days and then there’s bad ones.”

“We’ve had lots of bad ones, lately, haven’t we?” she settles down on the chair next to him and covers his hand with hers.

He quickly intertwines his fingers with hers and tightens his grip.

“Sometimes I wonder…how much pain we could actually take on before we truly break and can’t do it anymore.” he whispers and she leans on his shoulder, breathing his scent in. 

It’s been a while since they’ve had such an honest conversation, the last one must’ve been just after the accident when they’d lie in bed at night for hours and simply hold each other while they felt bad or cried or couldn’t breathe.

“Oh, I think we already got broken more than once, Bell.” he squeezes her hand again and then moves his arm up to pull her body to his chest. Her head falls over his beating heart and she closes her eyes, just listening to it. 

“I caused most of it.” he says swallowing hard.

“So did I.” she looks up and sees the tears quietly falling down his cheeks “Bell, no-” she gets up and sits up on his lap, straddling him in. His hands fall to her waist,supporting her, always keeping her safe.

“Don’t do this to yourself. We both fucked up, we both left, broke each other’s hearts, fucked each other up but it’s over now.”

“I’ll never forgive myself for what I did to you, princess.” his breath fans her face and she cups his cheeks.

“If you don’t, I won’t either. I left you all alone after Mount Weather.”

“It was just three months. I was gone for so long.”

“You went blind, Bellamy” her fingers end up in his curls and play with the knot of his bandage “That’s not something you just bounce from.”

“You destroyed a mountain full of people. You don’t come back from that either.”

“Okay, first of all, we destroyed it together and second of all, let’s not do this. I’m too tired of us measuring our pain, counting our mistakes. Don’t you want to just…move pass it? Start again?”

He smiles but he’s still crying, there’s deep sadness withing him now, sadness that she can’t push through sometimes, that drags him down further and further and sometimes takes him away from her completely.

“Do you think we can?”

“I know we can.” he nods and buries his head in her chest, feeling the softness of her hair that tingles his nose as her fingers keep digging through his curls. They stay like this for a while, just holding each other close, taking each other in. 

“Are you afraid still?”

“What?” he asks confused and moves his head up a bit.

“After the accident….you told me it’s all dark, that you’re scared. Do you still feel like this?”

“Sometimes.” he admits “It can be a lot, it can…consume you.”

“That’s okay.” she assures him and he shakes his head trying to get his point through.

“I don’t believe that feeling will ever go away, Clarke.” he admits and his voice trembles at it but it’s the first time he truly breaks down in front of her like this, admits it for how he truly feels about it “I think it’s fair that you know that.”

“I do, Bell” she promises and removes another rebellious curl from his forehead before leaning to kiss it “And it’s not going to push me away.” he nods, pushes his head in her chest again and she holds him tightly. “Before you ask again, I’m sure. I’m sure that I can do this and I want us to try…whatever it is that we’re doing.”

“Yeah?” he asks and he sounds like a child.

“Yeah.” she kisses his head again and keeps running his fingers through his curls until she ends up on the bandage again “Can I see you?”

“Clarke I-” he sounds embarrassed and her heart cries with him, wishing she could make him believe there’s nothing to be ashamed about.

“Please, I’ve missed you.” he agrees with a curt nod and she unties the bandage. 

It falls free and she looks at the scars covering his eyes. There was so much shrapnel and dust all over his face when they first brought him in medbay, she can see it so clearly now as if he was once again lying on a cot struggling for his life and her hands hold his face tighter, afraid that if she lets him go, all of it could come back and take him away.

Her fingers ghost over the thin lines-he’s so beautiful, still, no matter the pain, no matter the loss, he was still her Bellamy, blind or not. 

Her lips touch his eyelids and she feels his face burn under her hands. He might be a fearless leader for them all but he was just a shy boy who liked being hugged underneath all that cold exterior. 

“Open your eyes, Bell” she asks and he shakes his head stubbornly “Come on, let me see them.”

“They’re not like…before.”

“Neither is any of us.” 

His eyelids flutter and then he opens them up. 

She smiles at the sight of them-here’s that same familiar brown she hadn’t seen in almost a year. Suddenly all the memories come flooding back-him looking at her trying to find her gaze in a sea of a hundred kids, him pleading with that same brown not to leave camp, his eyes welling with tears at the sight of his sister being tortured at mount weather and his hand ending up on hers, pulling a lever.

Here they were again-that same brown, only now it was like a white veil covered his eyes, making them duller, sadder, darker.

“It’s still you, Bell” she says and she feels her own tears come down “It’s still you.”

“It is?” his question breaks her, the insecurity, the desperation.

“I promise.” she tells him and leans down to capture his lips with hers.

He kisses her back with his everything, she truly feels that every part of him is burning as much as she is and she smiles when his hands roam up and down her back, then end up on her neck and pull her closer. 

Their love turns to passion to sadness to excitement all at once-in one go, with one breath, hands clasped together, noses brushing against each other, hair messily falling all around.

When she finally pulls back she grabs his bandage and ties it over her own eyes.

“What are you doing?” he asks when he figures out what she’s up to, his calloused fingers roaming over the soft skin of her face, almost tickling her.

“What does it look like?”

“I don’t know, I’m blind.” he jokes and she slaps his chest, almost hitting his face in the process.

“We’re exploring the darkness together.” she announces and he chuckles as he pulls her closer again, whispering a thousand _I love you’s_ in her ear and making fun of her trying to kiss his lips but ending up smooching his nose.

Later that night they lay in bed together, her head resting on his chest while her fingers trace the freckles over his heart, his neck until they move to his nose and he huffs her away pretending to be annoyed but deep down enjoying her gentle touch. 

She smiles at him, her heart filling with love and thinks how their lives aren’t perfect but that’s okay because they never will be and maybe they were not supposed to be and it was good-as long as they were holding each other in their arms, she believed, everything would be alright.


	9. Epilogue: On both my sides

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So here it is! The epilogue! It is **five** years after the events of last chapter. I had fun writing this fic as much as it did bring out the worst of my anxiety. I never thought I'd write another multichapter after my last one but I am glad I did.
> 
> Thank you for your support and help throughout this fic. I hope you'll like that ending!
> 
> You can find me @jasperjoordan on tumblr.

He feels Clarke stir beside him and roll over with a groan. 

Gus’ wails could probably be heard in the entire camp and he knows his son is not one to easily cry or complain unless he was A:extremely hungry or B: in pain. 

The first would require Clarke to unfortunately completely wake up and the second he could deal with on his own, so he reaches out and finds her hand on her stomach, squeezing it lightly.

“I got it, go back to sleep.” he whispers in her ear as he quickly sits up. 

“What if he’s hungry?” she says slurred and this is yet another one of the moments he wishes he could see again-just to look at her adorably grumpy sleepy face and remove a strand of hair from her face, then lean down and kiss her forehead as he pulls the blanket up.

The universe, though, had other plans for him. And so did his son. 

“I’ll warm a bottle.”

“He likes being fed by me at night.” she stubbornly argues and he shushes her.

“Let me check which one of the cries is it first.” he compromises as he gets up and violently swings so he has to grab the bedside board to steady himself. 

That damn leg was a menace in the winter, proved to be a pain in he ass as soon as the first snow came in and sometimes it took him ten minutes to get it to function after he woke up in the morning, which wasn’t doing either one of them any favors with a newborn in the house who demanded to be held whenever he cried or wished for someone to pay attention to him all the time.

Ares, always the savior, trudges in and licks his fingers to announce his presence and together they head to Gus’ crib which they’ve placed in the middle of the bedroom-close enough to them and to the fireplace so he could always be warm.

“Hey, buddy, what is it?” Bellamy says quietly as to not disturb Clarke further when he reaches to take his six month old son in his arms. 

Gus immediately quiets when Bellamy pulls him to his bare chest and Ares lies down in his feet. He was seriously the sleepiest boy ever especially during the winter. 

“What hurts? Or are you hungry,huh?” he kisses his son’s head and rocks on his heels to soothe him.

As he leans down to breathe his scent in he smiles. 

It’s been five years since he came back home from Octavia’s village. Five painful and hard years, that tested them in ways they didn’t suppose. 

Their camp grew more and more with each summer, the crops were flourishing but then storms came in, devastating storms that would destroy half of what they had produced and they’d starve and ration so much in the winter that they barely survived it. 

Then there were floods and even an earthquake that was so strong it demolished most of the first cabins they had build. 

Then there was this one time two years ago when the commander asked them to send in people for a war with Azgeda so the clan could be pushed back north after attacking the Trikru border villages. 

But there was also the time Clarke and he got married after she came home from Polis where she was send as an ambassador for skaikru because of the war. 

She had thrown herself in his embrace and he had carried her home and refused to let her leave the cabin for two days. 

There were also the times when the delinquents were no longer happily fooling around, Monty and Harper moving in together, Miller and Bryan building their own cabin, Jasper falling in love with a grounder girl, Murphy becoming the camp’s main chef and Emori getting pregnant with their son.

And then there was Gus, who surely wasn’t a surprise. 

A year after their wedding, they started talking about kids. They were both eager and loved the idea, but they were scared too, Bellamy most of all.

A few days after they first talked about it, she came home to find him lying in bed, his head buried under the blanket and she knew it was one of the bad ones. He still had them-sometimes it was pain, physical pain when his leg hurt too much he barely dragged himself through camp or his head was feeling like it’d explode and he moved as if through a haze, barely making his surroundings. 

On those days, she’d stay close to him, keep an eye because it would be like the first few weeks after he went blind-he’d trip or get hurt or break something or even get lost which rarely happened after all the lessons Kai gave him. 

And then there are other days, when he was sad, depressed and he’d really try to push through for her, get out of bed, go through the motions of the day, pretend he’s alright, but she’ll know, she always did. 

He’d be slower, less talkative, he’d be really tired and wouldn’t eat much and at night when she spooned him and kept him close, he’d apologize for it and she’d shush him, tightening the grip of her arms on his chest. 

So when they started talking kids and she found him in bed like this, it took her an hour to get to the bottom of it.

“I’ll never get to see our kid, Clarke.” he’d confess as they lay in bed facing each other. 

She liked that when he came home from work (he still hunt rabbits and fished and he was now officially part of the council like her), he’d take the bandage off of his eyes. 

She loved seeing him for who he was and even though he felt vulnerable like this, ugly and broken, he’d done great progress taking it off, even if just at home. 

“Oh, Bell-”

“And that’s not even the worst of it. What if they get hurt and I can’t help them?”

“Bellamy, you can bandage a scraped knee.”

“What if I…I can’t take care of them? I don’t want you to do this all by yourself! They’ll be running around, screaming, exploring the world and what if I don’t know when they’re in danger or can’t catch them on time or drop them or…I probably won’t be able to feed them and then-”

“Bellamy, stop it!” she cut him off but he was on a roll.

“And what about when they grow up and they are embarrassed of me or want to tell me stuff about their life but I can’t help them in any way because I’m fucked up or-”

“Bellamy, STOP!” she had caught his face in her hands and made him listen. “You’ll be a great dad! You won’t drop them, that much I’m sure of and maybe you’ll make mistakes but so will I. Don’t you think I’m scared? God, I’m terrified of us creating a tiny human being who I’ll have to carry around in my body for nine months and then get to the world somehow and after that it’ll be all our responsibility!”

“It’s insane.” he says voice still shy and scared.

“It is. But I think we can do it.” she kisses his lips “In fact, I think we’ll make great parents.” she assures “Remember what I told you after the accident? That we can take it slowly? We’ll do so now too.”

“There will be many things for me to learn.”

“For me too.”

“It’ll take me longer.” he keeps stubbornly persisting “And I don’t want you to bear it all on your own.”

“I never have and never will.” she squeezes his hand “We’ve always been in this together, Bellamy, a kid would be no different.”

And so they’ve decided to try and a few months later, Clarke had found out she’s pregnant which was the happiest she’s seen Bellamy after the accident. 

He immediately got so excited that he pushed her to bed and kissed her about a hundred times before moving to her still flat stomach and promising their kid all the love his heart could give. 

And then he’d grown serious and started preparing from the next day on. He’d talk about the nursery, making a crib, getting baby clothes. 

He spent her entire pregnancy not only carving toys and building a room for their kid from scratch but also making sure she’s eating and resting enough, bringing her tea when she was tired, rubbing her legs, talking to her when the baby was kicking too much, whispering stories in her ear till she got tired and fell asleep. 

Her waters broke in the middle of the night and she woke him up as calmly as she could by squeezing his hand.

“Bell, my waters just broke” she had said and he had bolted upright as fast as he could.

She had to admit she adored him when he was panicking. There was something so cute and adorable about him having been preparing for this for a while. 

Getting them clothes and lying them on the chair, a bag of stuff for Clarke to use in medbay, even the first baby clothes they’d put on the kid, a blanket that he sew himself and when it finally happened he was this cute freckled messy haired mess that if she wasn’t in pain, she’d be laughing out loud.

“Bellamy, you do know that medbay is just like five minutes away from our house.”

“Seven and a half, I’ve timed it.” he had protested when he helped her sit up, threw a blanket over her and then insisted on carrying her to her mother who they had radioed to wait for them in medbay.

Then he had made another trip to get all the belongings half of which they didn’t even end up using.

Giving birth was surprisingly not as hard as she had thought. It took most of the night and early in the morning their baby boy finally made his way to this world. 

Bellamy was crying as much as she was, so much, that in fact his bandage had soaked. 

When they had placed Gus in her arms and left them to have a minute just together as a family, she had pulled at the knot holding it up and released it.

“Let him see you for who you are.” she had whispered then “It’s a first for him.”

“Okay.” he had agreed and then he washed his hands before he got to touch him. Gus was calm then and he has been a generally calm baby, so he had let his father’s big calloused fingers touch his face, his nose, his head and his chin.

“He has a lot of hair.” 

“I bet it’s gonna be curly just like yours.”

“What are his eyes like?”

“Hmm…I think they’ll be this mix of green and blue, they are not as bright blue as mine. They remind me of my father’s eyes actually.” he had cried so much that a few of his tears ended up on Gus’ face who stirred and cuddled closer to Clarke’s chest. “But maybe they’ll change.”

“And his skin?”

“He has freckles all over, even of his back. He looks a lot like you but his lips are thinner and his nose is more chippy.” Bellamy’s hands slide to his little arms.

“He’s so small, his fingers are so tiny.” but they had wrapped around Bellamy’s thumb on instinct and she watched him smile.

“He’s quite tall, though, he’ll be a tall one.” she comments and she doesn’t know if to look at her husband gushing over their baby or their baby gushing over being hungry. 

He cried a bit and Bellamy immediately furrowed his eyebrows in confusion until she moved her shirt down and let him nurse.

“Is he eating?”

“Oh yeah, he’s hungry.” Bellamy smiles and it’s the brightest smile in the universe. “God, Bellamy…we did this. We made him.”

“And now we have to raise him.” she reaches down to take his hand in hers and squeezes it tightly.

“You’ll need to describe him to me” he says with worry “How he changes, what is different about him every day.”

“I will. He’s beautiful,Bellamy. He’s _so beautiful._ ”

Then Bellamy had climbed up in bed with them and they stayed like this for hours. 

Now six months later Bellamy was holding that same gurgling sweet mess in his arms.

“I know, I know, life is pain and you hate being woken up in the middle of the night cause you’re hungry, huh?” he keeps rubbing his back and kissing his head. 

He had been so afraid to hold him at first, thinking that he’ll drop him or hurt him in any way but then Clarke had sensed it and she had just told him to sit down and then put Gus in his arms and said “Now walk around the cabin with him!” and he had and when he didn’t drop him, he felt good, felt right. 

“Bell, just bring him here.” he turns around to the sound of her voice and hears her rustling under the sheets, probably sitting up and leaning on the bed board.

He carries Gus there and carefully sits beside her.

“Here you go, big boy, you hungry, huh?” she takes him from his arms and he hears her pull her shirt away.

“He was hungry two hours ago. I admire his appetite.”

“One thing less to worry about.” Bellamy moves closer and lifts his arm so she could lean on his chest while she nurses Gus, it was her favorite, and his in fact too, to do when they woke up like this in the middle of the night. 

“What’s new about him today?” he asks as he kisses Gus’s foot and his son tries to kick him off. 

He surely had an attitude like his mom. Clarke keeps saying he looks more and more like him with every passing day but he felt that he’d be a stubborn hurricane like her.

“Well his hair I think is a bit longer now, there’s a curl that falls on his forehead.”

“One single curl?”

“Yep, just like that one.” and she moves her free hand to push his hair off of his forehead which makes him smile.

“You think he’d like it long?”

“Did you ever have a long hair when you were a kid?”

“Oh yeah, there was this entire phase when Octavia wanted to learn how to braid so I had to let it grow. I was a thirteen year old long-haired mess and everyone at school made fun of me.” Clarke chuckles too but it’s short and she leans her head on his chest. 

She’s really tired. As much as he was trying to help out, he still had to go out and hunt and attend council meetings while she was stuck here with Gus. 

Next week was going to be her first back to medbay, taking it easy of course, having shifts only till noon while he was taking care of Gus. He liked that they had the whole team work going but he wished she got more sleep. 

“You must’ve looked funny.”

“I had to tie it up and it was a pain to wash but yeah…guess I was.” she digs her fingers in his hair now and ruffles it a bit. 

He had only recently trimmed it, actually she did, when he came home one evening and said he looked like a cavemen. She had put him on a chair in the kitchen and helped him shave and cut his hair so he started looking more like a person and less like he was a stranger coming in their house to steal something. 

“He has that nice blue onsie on that you sew for him and it makes him look super sweet.”

“The one with the dog patch on?”

“Yeah. I love that one.”

“I know you do.” he leans down to kiss her head and she hums in content.

“Can’t wait for O to meet him tomorrow.”

It wold be a first for Octavia. 

They hadn’t been able to come when Clarke gave birth because half the village was travelling south to trade with other clans during the summer and this time she, Lincoln and their five year old son Caleb, decided to go, have an adventure of their own, travel a bit and trade and learn new things. 

Lincoln had taken up on carpeting a lot since Bellamy was last there and when he came by Arkadia to visit them, they spent hours in the shack they had in the backyard and Bellamy showed him all the stuff he had carved or the chairs he had made and Lincoln always taught him something new or admired his work. 

It was a nice brother bonding time that they definitely, as Octavia insisted, needed, so she and Clarke can have all the girl fun they want.

Caleb was the biggest Bellamy fan, he simply adored his uncle and whenever he came by, he’d rush in his arms and climb all over him, tell him every new mythology story he learned from his mom or something interesting he’d seen. 

But he also really loved Clarke. He’d sit in her lap and watch her draw for hours, it almost made Bellamy envious if it wasn’t for the fact that Clarke was amazing with him and together they were the best friends in the universe.

Now Caleb had been excited to have a cousin so he could play with them, though surely it would take Gus some time to run around the fields with him. 

“Me too. I bet she’ll bring a thousand presents and spoil him rotten.”

“Just like we do with Caleb.” she nods against his chest and hears her sigh “Did he fall asleep?”

“Oh,yeah, but he keeps on eating.”

“Thank God, I won’t have to go around pushing plates in his hands when he grows up.”

“There’s time.” she says teasingly.

“Don’t even joke with that.” she chuckles and leans further into him. A few minutes later she moves up “Okay, I think he’s done.”

Bellamy carries him back to his crib, all full and satisfied and when he comes back to bed, he maneuvers a tired Clarke over his chest and pulls the blanket over them. 

He runs his hand through her hair and she hums content as she drifts off. 

He doesn’t fall right away after that, instead he enjoys that moment-the quiet peacefulness of the night, the most important people in his life sleeping on both his sides, one in their crib and the other sprayed over his chest and he thinks, with his heart full, how grateful he is for all that he has.

Yes, he has lost a lot, yes, he will never see how exactly his son looks like or watch him grow or even watch Clarke grow older and change. 

He’ll never know the little details about them, some of Gus’ gestures or how his face changes when he’s sad or happy or angry, but he could hear them, touch them and that was more than he could ask for.

After the accident, when he was stuck in medbay all miserable and in pain, he had thought of so many things, bad things, dark things, like sneaking out to the guard’s storage and finding a gun that he would press to his head and get it over with. Set Clarke free of the burden that he had become, save himself of this life of pain and he had contemplated over it for hours upon end. 

But something always pulled him back to the surface, little things really.

Clarke’s voice when she came in the middle of the night, the gentle touch of her hand on his, her lips brushing his forehead, her words promising it would be fine eventually. She had always been the light in the darkness and she had turned out to be right-he had a life, a beautiful life.

He had his sister coming in tomorrow with a cute chubby five year old screaming menace. He had Octavia talking to him over the radio when he felt bad, he had Lincoln’s brotherly grip on his shoulder when they were talking about carpentry. 

He had Jasper and Monty gushing over sweet little Gus and talking all funny when they were around him. He had Miller out with him hunting or describing plans about expanding the camp. He had Raven to work out with when they felt like it.

He had so much. And he smiled to himself as he pulled a snoring Clarke closer. God, she was so soft and sweet like this, a cute sleepy-deprived mess that he got to hold in his arms and give all his love to.

He leaned down and kissed her forehead, she stirred a bit in his embrace but then kept on sleeping, snoring just barely.

He let his eyelids drop-it made no difference now-whether his eyes were open or closed, it was darkness all around him but for once, he was not afraid of it.


End file.
